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THE 



TAKING OF LOUISBURG 



H4S 



BY 



SAMUEL ADAMS DRAKE 

AUTHOR OF " BURGOYNE'S INVASION OF 1777 " ETC. 




BOSTON MDCCCXCI 
LEE AND SHEPARD PUBLISHERS 

10 MILK STREET NEXT "THE OLD SOUTH MEETING HOUSE " 

NEW YORK CHAS. T. DILLINGHAM 

7lS AND 720 BROADWAY 



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Copyright, 1890, 
Bv Lee and Shepard. 

THE TAKING OF LOUISBUKG. 



•D 7 <f 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Colonial Seacoast Defences .... 9 

II. Louisburg Revisited 13 

III. Louisburg to Solve Important Political and 

Military Problems 24 

IV. Resume of Events to the Declaration of 

War 33 

V. " Louisburg must be taken " .... 46 

VI. The Army and its General .... 59 

VII. The Army at Canso 73 

VIII. The Siege 80 

IX. The Siege Continued 101 

X. Afterthoughts 126 



THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

1745 



COLONIAL SEACOAST DEFENCES 

The creation of great maritime fortresses, 
primarily designed to hold with iron hand impor- 
tant highways of commerce, like Gibraltar, or 
simply to guard great naval arsenals, like 
Kronstadt, or, again, placed where some great river 
has cleft a broad path into the heart of a 
country, thus laying it open to invasion, has long 
formed part of the military policy of all maritime 
nations. 

In the New World the Spaniards were the first 
to emphasize their adhesion to these essential 
principles by the erection of strongholds at 
Havana, Carthagena, Porto Bello, and Vera Cruz, 
not more to guarantee the integrity of their colo- 



IO THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

nial possessions, than to protect themselves 
against the rapacity of the titled freebooters of 
Europe, to whom the treasure fleets of Mexico 
and the East offered a most alluring prey. When 
Spain carried the purse, all the crowned heads of 
Europe seem to have turned highwaymen. 

With this single exception the seaboard defences 
of the Atlantic coast, even as late as the middle 
of the eighteenth century, were of the most trivial 
character, nor was it owing to any provision for 
defence that the chief ports of the English 
colonies enjoyed the long immunity they did. 
England left her colonies to stand or fall upon 
their own resources. Fortunate beyond expecta- 
tion, they simply throve by neglect. France, with 
a widely different colonial policy, did a little better, 
but with a niggardly hand, while her system was 
squeezing the life-blood out of her colonists, drop 
by drop. Had there been a Drake or a Hawkins 
in the Spanish service, Spain might easily have 
revenged all past affronts by laying desolate every 
creek and harbor of the unprotected North 
Atlantic coast. She had the armed ports, as we 
have just shown. She had the ships and sailors. 



COLONIAL SEACOAST DEFENCES I I 

What, then, was to have prevented her from 
destroying the undefended villages of Charleston, 
Philadelphia, New York, and Boston ? 

Though she set about it so tardily, France was 
at length compelled to adopt a system of defence 
for Canada, or see Canada wrested from her con- 
trol. In a most sweeping sense the St. Lawrence 
was the open gateway of Canada. There was 
absolutely no other means of access to all its vast 
territory except through the long, little known, 
and scarce-travelled course of the Mississippi — a 
route which, for many reasons besides its isolation, 
removed it from consideration as an avenue of 
attack. 

Quebec was as truly the heart of Canada as the 
St. Lawrence was its great invigorating, life- 
giving artery. It is true that Quebec began to 
assume at a very early day something of its later 
character as half city, half fortress, but the views 
of its founders were unquestionably controlled as 
much by the fact of remoteness from the sea, as 
by Quebec's remarkable natural capabilities for 
blocking the path to an enemy. 

Yet even before the memorable and decisive 



12 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

battle on the Plains of Abraham, by which Canada 
was lost to France forever, the St. Lawrence had 
been thrice ascended by hostile fleets, and Quebec 
itself once taken by them. Mere remoteness was 
thus demonstrated to be no secure safeguard 
against an enterprising enemy. But what if that 
enemy should seize and fortify the mouth of the 
St. Lawrence itself ? He would have put a 
tourniquet upon the great artery, to be tightened 
at his pleasure, and the heart of the colony, despite 
its invulnerable shield, would beat only at his 
dictation. 

We will now pass on to the gradual develop- 
ment of this idea in the minds of those who held 
the destiny of Canada in their keeping. 



LOUISBURG REVISITED I 3 



II 



LOUISBURG REVISITED 



The annals of a celebrated fortress are sure to 
present some very curious and instructive phases 
of national policy and character. Of none of the 
fortresses of colonial America can this be said 
with greater truth than of Louisburg, once the 
key and stronghold of French power in Canada. 

No historic survey can be called complete which 
does not include the scene itself. Nowhere does 
the reality of history come home to us with such 
force, or leave such deep, abiding impressions, as 
when we stand upon ground where some great 
action has been performed, or reach a spot hal- 
lowed by the golden memories of the past. It 
gives tone, color, consistency to the story as noth- 
ing else can, and, for the time being, we almost 
persuade ourselves that we, too, are actors in the 
great drama itself. 



14 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

It is doubtless quite true that the first impres- 
sions one gets when coming into Louisburg from 
sea must be altogether disappointing. Indeed, 
speaking for myself, I had formed a vague notion, 
I know not how, that I was going to see another 
Quebec, or, at least, something quite like that an- 
tique stronghold,' looming large in the distance, 
just as the history of the fortress itself looms up 
out of its epoch. On the contrary, we saw a low, 
tame coast, without either prominent landmark or 
seamark to denote the harbor, except to those who 
The cape know every rock and tree upon it, lift- 
Breton coast. i n g now here the castellated ruins that 
one's eyes are strained to seek, and chiefly formi- 
dable now on account of the outlying shoals, 
sunken reefs, and intricate passages that render 
the navigation both difficult and dangerous to 
seamen. 

On drawing in toward the harbor, we pass be- 
tween a cluster of three small, rocky islets at the 
Lighthouse kft nan cl, one of which is joined to that 
Point. shore by a sunken reef ; and a rocky 

point, of very moderate elevation, at the right, on 
which the harbor lighthouse stands, the ship chan- 



LOUISBURG REVISITED 15 

nel being thus compressed to a width of half a mile 
between the innermost island and point. 

The harbor is so spacious as to seem deserted, 
and so still as to seem oppressive. 

The island just indicated was, in the days of the 
Anglo-French struggles here, the key to this har- 
isiand k° r ' but the opposite point proved the 

Battery. master-key. Neither of the great war 
fleets that took part in the two sieges of Louis- 
burg ventured to pass the formidable batteries of 
that island, commanding as they did the entrance 
at short range, and masking the city behind them, 
until their fire had first been silenced from the 
lighthouse point yonder. When that was done, 
Louisburg fell like the ripe pear in autumn. 

The old French city and fortress, the approach 
to which this Island Battery thus securely covered, 
old rose at the southwest point of the har- 

Lomsburg. b orj or on tne gj^g opposite to the pres- 
ent town of Louisburg, which is a fishing and 
coaling station for six months in the year, and for 
the other six counts for little or nothing. In 
summer it is land-locked ; in winter, ice-locked. 
Pack ice frequently blockades the shores of the 



l6 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

whole island until May, and snow sometimes lies 
in the woods until June. Yet in Cape Breton they 
call Louisburg an open harbor, and its choice as 
the "site for a fortress finally turned upon the 
belief that it was accessible at all seasons of the 
year. As to that, we shall see later. 

As for the country lying between Sydney and 
Louisburg, all travellers agree in pronouncing it 
wholly without interesting features. And the few 
inhabitants are scarcely more interesting than the 
country. In a word, it is roughly heaved about in 

Face of the a sei "i es °f sna g&y ridges, sometimes 
country. rising to a considerable height, through 
which the Mira, an arm of the sea, forces its way 
at flood-tide. There is a settlement or two upon 
this stream, as there was far back in the time of 
the French occupation, but everything about the 
country wears a forlorn and unprosperous look ; 
the farms being few and far between, the houses 
poor, the land thin and cold, and the people — I 
mean them no disparagement — much like the land, 
from which they get just enough to live upon, and 
no more. Fortunately their wants are few, and 
their habits simple. 



LOUISBURG REVISITED \j 

Louisburg is certainly well worth going nine 
hundred miles to see, but when, at last, one stands 
Remains of on tne grass-grown ramparts, and gets 

ortress. h j g firgt ser j ous j dea Q £ ^^ amaz j n g 

strength and extent, curiosity is lost in wonder, 
wonder gives way to reflection, and reflection leads 
straight to the question, " What do all these miles 
of earthworks mean?" And I venture to make 
the assertion that no one who has ever been to 
Louisburg will rest satisfied till he has found his 
answer. The story is long, but one rises from its 
perusal with a clearer conception of the nature of 
the struggle for the mastery of a continent. 

Perhaps the one striking thought about this place 
is its utter futility. Man having no further use 

for it, nature quietly reclaims it for her own again. 

Sheep now walk the ramparts instead of sentinels. 
Upon looking about him, one sees the marked 

feature of all this region in the chain of low hills 

Dominating rising behind Louisburg. But a little 
back from the coast the hills rise higher, 

are drawn more compactly together, and assume 

the semi-mountainous character common to the 

whole island. 



1 8 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

As this chain of hills undulates along the coast 

here, sometimes bending a little back from it, or 

again inclining out toward it, one of its 

Green Hill. 

zigzags approaches within a mile of 
Louisburg. At this point, several low, lumpy 
ridges push off for the seashore, through long 
reaches of boggy moorland, now and then disap- 
pearing beneath a shallow pond or stagnant pool, 
which lies glistening among the hollows between. 
Where it is uneven the land is stony and unfer- 
tile ; where level, it is a bog. This rendered the 
land side as unfavorable to a besieging force as 
the nest of outlying rocks and reefs did the sea 
approaches. A continued rainfall must have 
made it wholly untenable for troops. 

It is one of these ridges just noticed as breaking 
away from the main range toward the seashore, 
and so naturally bent, also, as to touch the sea at 
tu c- ♦■« a one end and the harbor at the other, 

T he Fortified ' 

Line. that the French engineers converted 

into a regular fortification ; while within the space 
thus firmly enclosed by both nature and art, the 
old city of the lilies stretched down a gentle, 
grassy slope to the harbor shore. 



LOUISBURG REVISITED IQ 

Not one stone of this city remains upon another 
to-day. After the second siege (1758) the English 
Demolition of engineers were ordered to demolish it, 
the city. anc |^ so £ ar ag p resen t appearances go, 

never was an order more effectually carried out. 
All that one sees to-day, in room of it, is a poor 
fishing hamlet, straggling along the edge of the 
harbor, the dwellings being on one side, and the 
fish-houses and stages on the other side of the Syd- 
ney road, which suddenly contracts into a lane, 
and then comes to an end, along with the village 
itself, in a fisherman's back-yard. 

Not so, however, with the still massive earth- 
works, for the British engineers were only able, 
after many months' labor, and with a liberal use 
of powder, to partly execute the work of demoli- 
tion assigned them. 

I spent several hours, at odd times, in wandering 
about these old ruins, and could not help being 
thankful that for once, at least, the destroying 
hand of man had been compelled to abandon its 
work to the rains and frosts of heaven. 

Beginning with the citadel, in which the formali- 
ties of the surrender took place, I found it still 



20 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

quite well defined, although nothing now remains 
above ground except some old foundation walls to 
_.. , . show where long ranges of stone build- 

Citadel or » t> 

King's Bastion. m g S once stood. Here were the differ- 
ent military offices, the officers' quarters and the 
chapel. The shattered bomb-proofs, however, 
were still distinguishable, though much choked up 
with debris, and their well-turned arches remain 
The case- to snow h° w firmly the solid masonry 
mates. resisted the assaults of the engineers. 

In these damp holes the women, children, and 
non-combatants passed most of the forty-seven 
days of the siege. From this starting-point one 
may continue the walk along the ramparts, without 
once quitting them, for fully a mile, to the point 
where they touch the seashore among the 
inaccessible rocks and heaving surf of the ocean 
itself. 

These ramparts nowhere rise more than fifty feet 
above the sea-level, but are everywhere of amazing 
thickness and solidity. The moat was originally 
eighty feet across, and the walls stood thirty feet 
above it, but these dimensions have been much 
reduced by the work of time and weather. A 



LOUISBURG REVISITED 21 

considerable part of the line was further defended 
by a marsh, through which a storming column 
would have found it impossible to advance, and 
hardly less difficult to make a retreat. The 
besiegers were therefore obliged to concentrate 
their attack upon one or two points, and 

Natural Ob- * r 

staciesmade these had been rendered the most 

use of. 

formidable of the whole line in conse- 
quence of the knowledge that the other parts were 
comparatively unassailable. In other words, the 
besieged were able to control, in a measure, where 
the besiegers should attack them. 

Although the partly ruined bomb-proofs are the 
only specimens of masonry now to be seen in 
making this tour, the broad and deep excavation 
of the moat and covered-way, and the clean, well- 
grassed slopes of the glacis, promise to hold 
together for another century at least. Brambles 
and fallen earth choke up the embrasures. It is 
necessary to use care in order to avoid treading 
upon a toad or a snake while you are groping 
among the mouldy casemates or when crossing 
the parade. Those magical words " In the King's 
name," so often proclaimed here with salvos of 



22 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

artillery, have now no echo except in the sullen 
dash of the sea against the rocky shores outside 
the perishing fortress, and 

" What care these roarers for the name of King?" 

Still following the sheep-paths that zigzag about 

so as nearly to double the distance, I next turned 

back toward the harbor, leaving on my right the 

bleak and wind-swept field in which, to 

Graveyard, 

Point Roche- the lasting reproach of New England, 
five hundred of her bravest sons lie 
without stone or monument to mark their last 
resting-place. It is true that most of these men 
died of disease, and not in battle ; yet to see the 
place as I saw it, in all its pitiful nakedness, 
isolation, and neglect, is the one thing at 
Louisburg that a New Englander would gladly 
have missed ; and he will be very apt to walk on 
with a slower and less confident step, and with 
something less of admiration for the glory which 
consigns men to such oblivion as this. 

To give anything like an adequate idea of how 
skilfully all the peculiarities of the ground were 
in some cases made use of in forming the 



LOUISBURG REVISITED 23 

defences, or in others, with equal art, overcome, 
would require a long chapter to itself. In order 
to render the main fortress more secure, the 
French engineer officers selected a spot three- 
fourths of a mile above it, on the harbor shore, 
Ro ai on wn i cn ^ey erected a battery that 

Battery. ra ked the open roadstead with its fire. 
It was a very strong factor in the system of 
defences as against a sea attack. This isolated 
work was called the Royal Battery, or in the 
English accounts, the Grand Battery. Yet, so far 
from contributing to the successful defence of the 
fortress, it became, in the hands of the besiegers, 
a powerful auxiliary to its capture. But the whole 
system of defence here shows that the marshes 
extending on the side of Gabarus Bay, where a 
landing was practicable only in calm weather, 
were considered an insuperable obstacle to the 
movements of artillery ; and without artillery 
Louisburg could never have been seriously 
attacked from the land side. Against a sea 
attack it was virtually impregnable. 



24 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 



III 



LOUISBURG TO SOLVE IMPORTANT POLITICAL AND 
MILITARY PROBLEMS 

Having glanced at the purely military exigen- 
cies, which had at length forced themselves upon 
the attention of French statesmen, and having 
gone over the ground with the view of impressing 
its topographical features more firmly in our minds, 
we may now look at the underlying political and 
economic causes, out of which the French court 
finally matured a scheme for the maintenance of 
their colonial possessions in Canada in the broadest 
sense. 

In creating Louisburg the court of Versailles 
had far more extended views than the building of 
a strong fortress to guard the gateway into Canada 
would of itself imply. Unquestionably that was 
a powerful inducement to the undertaking ; but, 
in the beginning, it certainly appears to have been 



POLITICAL AND MILITARY PROBLEMS 25 

only a secondary consideration. For a long time 
the condition of affairs in the colony had been far 
French Colo- from satisfactory, while the future prom- 
niai system. j sec i little that was encouraging. Com- 
pared with the English colonies, its progress was 
slow, irregular, and unstable. Agriculture was 
greatly neglected. So were manufactures. The 
home government had exercised, from the first, 
a guardianship that in the long run proved fatal to 
the growth of an independent spirit. There were 
swarms of governmental and ecclesiastical depend- 
ents who laid hold of the fattest perquisites, or 
else, through munificent and inconsiderate grants 
obtained from the crown, enjoyed monopolies of 
trade to the exclusion of legitimate competition. 
These leeches were sucking the life-blood out of 
Canada. So far, then, from being a self-sustaining 
colony, the annual disbursements of the 

Its Unsatis- 
factory Work- crown were looked to as a means to 

make good the deficiency arising be- 
tween what the country produced and what it con- 
sumed. Without protection the English colonies 
steadily advanced in wealth and population ; with 
protection, Canada, settled at about the same time, 
scarcely held her own. 



26 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

Two very able and sagacious men, the intend- 
ants Raudot, were the first who had the courage 
to lay before the court of Versailles the true con- 
dition of affairs, and the ability to suggest a 
remedy for it. 

These intendants represented that the fur trade 
had always engrossed the attention of the Cana- 
The Fur Trade dians, to the exclusion of everything 
Monopoly. e j se Not on iy had the beaver skin 

become the recognized standard for all exchanges 
of values, but the estimated annual product of the 
country was based upon it, very much as we should 
reckon the worth of the grain crop to the United 
States to-day. It was also received in payment 
for revenues. Now, after a long experience, what 
was the result of an exclusive attention to this 
traffic ? It was shown that the fur trade enriched 
no one except a few merchants, who left the coun- 
try as soon as they had acquired the means of 
living at their ease in Old France. It had, there- 
fore, no element whatever of permanent advantage 
to the colony. 

It was also shown that this fur trade was by no 
means sufficient to sustain a colony of such impor- 



POLITICAL AND MILITARY PROBLEMS 2J 

tance as Canada unquestionably might become 

under a different system of management ; for 

whether the beaver should finally be- 

Danger of Ex- 
clusive Atten- come extinct through the greed of the 

tion to it. ..... 

traders, or so cheapened by glutting the 
market abroad as to lose its place in commerce 
entirely, it was evident that precisely the same 
result would be reached. In any case, the busi- 
ness was a precarious one. It limited the number 
of persons who could be profitably employed ; it 
bred them up to habits of indolence and vice with- 
out care for the future ; and it kept them in igno- 
rance and poverty to the last. But, what was 
worst of all, this all-engrossing pursuit kept the 
population from cultivating the soil, the true and 
only source of prosperity to any country. 

Other cogent reasons were given, but these 
most conclusively set forth what a mercantile 
monopoly having its silent partners in the local 
government and church, as well as in the royal 
palace itself, had been able to do in the way of 
retarding the development of the great native 
resources of Canada. It was so ably done that no 
voice was raised against it. And with this most 



28 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

lucid and fearless expose' of the puerile use thus 
far made of those resources the memorialist states- 
men hoped to open the king's eyes. 

They now proposed to wholly reorganize this 

unsound commercial system by directing capital 

and labor into new channels. Such 

The two Rau- 

dotsoffera natural productions of the country as 
masts, boards, ship-timber, flax, hemp, 
plaster, iron and copper ores, dried fish, whale and 
seal oils, and salted meats, might be exported, they 
said, with profit to the merchant and advantage to 
the laboring class, provided a suitable port were 
secured, at once safe, commodious, and well situ- 
ated for collecting all these commodities, and 
shipping them abroad. 

To this end, these intendants now first brought 

to notice the advantages of Cape Breton for such 

an establishment. Strangely enough, 

Cape Breton 

brought to up to this time little or no attention had 
been paid to this island. Three or four 
insignificant fishing ports existed on its coasts, 
but as yet the whole interior was a shaggy wilder- 
ness, through which the Micmac Indians roamed 
as freely as their fathers had done before Cartier 



POLITICAL AND MILITARY PROBLEMS 20, 

ascended the St. Lawrence. Its valuable deposits 
of coal and gypsum lay almost untouched in their 
native beds ; its stately timber trees rotted where 
they grew ; its unrivalled water-ways, extending 
through the heart of the island, served no better 
purpose than as a highway for wandering savages. 
By creating such a port as the Raudots sug- 
gested, the voyage from France would be short- 
ened one half, and the dangerous navigation of the 
St. Lawrence altogether avoided, since, instead of 
large ships having to continue their voyages to 
Quebec, the carrying trade of the St. Lawrence 
would fall to coasting vessels owned in the colony. 
A strong hand would also be given to 

Acadia to be 

helped. the neighbor province, the fertile yet 

unprotected Acadia, which might thus be pre- 
served against the designs of the English, while a 
thriving trade in wines, brandies, linens, and rich 
stuffs might reasonably be expected to spring up 
with the neighboring English colonies. 

These were considerations of such high national 
importance as to at once secure for the project an 
attention which purely strategic views could hardly 
be expected to command. And yet, the forming 



30 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

of a military and naval depot, strong enough to 

guarantee the security of the proposed port, and 

in which the king's ships might at need 

A Military and 

Naval Arsenal refit, or take refuge, or sally out upon 

proposed. 

an enemy, was an essential feature of 
this elaborate plan, every detail of which was 
set forth with systematic exactness. For seven 
years the project was pressed upon the French 
court. War, however, then engaging the whole 
attention of the ministry, the execution of this 
far-seeing project, which had in view the demands 
of peace no less than of war, was unavoidably put 
off until the peace of Utrecht, in 171 3, by giving 
a wholly new face to affairs in the New World, 
compelled France to take energetic measures for 
the security of her colonial possessions. 

By this treaty of Utrecht France surrendered 

to England all Nova Scotia, all her conquests in 

Hudson's Bay, with Placentia, her most important 

, establishment in Newfoundland. At the 

Peace of 

utrecht. same time the treaty left Cape Breton 
to France, an act of incomparable folly on the 
part of the English plenipotentiaries who, with the 
map lying open before them, thus handed over to 



POLITICAL 'AND MILITARY PROBLEMS 3 I 

Louis the key of the St. Lawrence and of Canada. 
No one now doubts that the French king saw in 
this masterpiece of stupidity a way to retrieve all 
he had lost at a single stroke. The English com- 
missioners, it is to be presumed, saw nothing. 

Having the right to fortify, lacier the treaty, it 
only remained for the French court to determine 
which of the island ports would be best adapted to 
the purpose, St. Anne, on the north, or English 
Harbor on the south-east coast. St. Anne was a 
safe and excellent haven, easily made impregnable, 
with all the materials requisite for building and 
fortifying to be found near the spot. Behind it 
lay the fertile cotes of the beautiful Bras d'Or, 
with open water stretching nearly to the Straits 
of, Canso. On the other hand, besides beino- 
surrounded by a sterile country, materials of every 
kind, except timber, must be transported to 
English Harbor at a great increase of labor and 
cost. More could be done at St. Anne with two 
thousand francs, it was said, than with two hundred 
thousand at the rival port. But the difficulty of 
taking ships of large tonnage into St. Anne 
through an entrance so narrow that only one could ■ 



32 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

pass in or out at the same time, finally gave the 
preference to English Harbor, which had a ship 

channel of something less than two 
Hafbor hundred fathoms in breadth, a good 

chosen. anchorage, and plenty of beach room 

for erecting stages and drying fish. It was, more- 
over, sooner clear of ice in spring. 

The first thing done at Cape Breton was to 
change the old, time-honored name of the island 
— the very first, it is believed, which signalled the 

presence of Europeans in these waters 
changed to — to the unmeaning one of Isle Royale. 
.omsburg. English Harbor also took the name of 
Louisburg, in honor of the reigning monarch. 
Royalty having thus received its dues, the work 
of construction now began in earnest. 



THE DECLARATION OF WAR 33 



IV 



RESUME OF EVENTS TO THE DECLARATION 
OF WAR 

We will now rapidly sketch the course of events 
which led to war on both sides of the Atlantic. 

Having been obliged to surrender Nova Scotia 
and Newfoundland, the French court determined 
to make use of their colonists in those places for 
building up Louisburg. 

In the first place, M. de Costebello, who had just 
lost his government of the French colony of 
Placentia, in Newfoundland, under the terms of 
the treaty, was ordered to take charge of the 
proposed new colony on Cape Breton, and in 
accord also with the provisions of that treaty, the 

colonists pro- French inhabitants of Newfoundland 

.... ■ 

were presently removed from that 
island to Cape Breton. But the Acadians of 
Nova Scotia who had been invited, and were fully 



34 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

counted upon to join the other colonists, now 
showed no sort of disposition to do so. In their 
case the French authorities had reckoned without 
their host. These always shrewd Acadians were 
unwilling to abandon the fertile and well-tilled 
Acadian valleys, which years of toil had converted 
into a garden, to begin a new struggle with the 
Acadians win wilderness in order to carry out certain 
not emigrate, political schemes of the French court. 
Though patriots, they were not simpletons. So 
they sensibly refused to stir, although their 
country had been turned over to the English. In 
this way the French authorities were unexpectedly 
checked in their first efforts to secure colonists of 
a superior class for their new establishment in 
Cape Breton. 

How strange are the freaks of destiny ! Could 
these simple Acadian peasants have foreseen 
what was in store for them at no distant day, at 
the hands of their new masters, who can doubt 
that, like the Israelites of old, driving their flocks 
before them, they too would have departed for the 
Promised Land with all possible speed ? 

Finding them thus obstinate, it was determined 



THE DECLARATION OF WAR 35 

to make them as useful as possible where they 

were, and as a reconquest of Acadia was one of 

those contingencies which Louisburg was meant to 

turn into realities, whenever the proper 

A Thorn in the 

side of the moment should arrive, nothing was 
neglected that might tend to the hold- 
ing of these Acadians firmly to their ancient alle- 
giance ; to keeping alive their old antipathies ; to 
arousing their fears for their religion, or to strongly 
impressing them with the belief that their legiti- 
mate sovereign would soon drive these English 
invaders from the land, never to return. For the 
moment the king's lieutenants were obliged to 
content themselves with planting this thorn in 
the side of the English. 

Acting upon the advice of the crafty Saint 
Ovide, De Costebello's successor, the Acadians 
refused to take the oath of allegiance proffered 
them by the British governor of Nova Scotia — 
though they had refused to emigrate they said 
they would not become British subjects. When 
threatened they sullenly hinted at an uprising of 
the Micmacs, who were as firmly attached to the 
French interest as the Acadians themselves. 



-6 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

The governor, therefore, prudently forbore to 
press matters to a crisis, all the more readily be- 
cause he was powerless to enforce obe- 

Why called 

Neutrals. dience ; and thus it came to pass that 
the French inhabitants of Nova Scotia, under 
English dominion, first took the name of neu- 
trals. 

Perceiving at last how they were being ground 
between friend and foe, the Acadians began 
hoarding specie, and to leave off improving their 
houses and lands. A little later they are found 
applying to the Governor-General of Canada for 
grants of land in the old colony, to which they 
might remove, and where they could dwell in 
peace, for they somehow divined that they must 
be the losers whenever fresh hostilities should 
break out between the French and English, if, as 
it seemed inevitable, the war should involve them 
in its calamities. But that astute official returned 
only evasive answers to their petition. His royal 
master had other views, to the success- 

Victims to 

French Policy. £ u i j sslie f w hich his lieutenants were 
fully pledged, and so it is primarily to French 
policy, after all, that the wretched Acadians owed 



THE DECLARATION OF WAR 37 

their exile from the land of their fathers. What 
followed was merely the logical result. 

But in consequence of their first refusal to 
remove to Louisburg only a handful of the 
Micmacs responded to Costebello's call, by pitch- 
ing their wigwams on the skirt of the embryo city. 

Laborers were wanted next. For the procuring 
of these the Governor-General of Canada, the 
Marquis de Vaudreuil, hit upon the novel idea of 
Laborers from transporting every year from France 
the Gaiieys. t h ose prisoners who were sentenced to 
the galleys for smuggling. They were to come 
out to Canada subject to the severe penalty of 
never again being permitted to return to their 
native land, "for which," said the cunning 
marquis, " I undertake to answer." 

Lord Bacon, in one of his essays, makes the 
following comments upon this iniquitous method 
of raising up colonies : " It is a shameful and 
unblessed thing," he says, "to take the scum of 
people, and wicked condemned men to be the 
people with whom you plant ; and not only so, but 
it spoileth the plantations ; for they will ever live 
like rogues, and not fall to work, but be lazy, and 



38 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

do mischief and spend victuals : and be quickly 
weary, and then certify over to their country to 
the discredit of the plantation." 

Meanwhile, the sceptre that had borne such 
potent sway in Europe dropped from the lifeless 
hand of Louis the Great, to be taken up by the 
"crowned automaton," Louis XV. 

Pursuant to the policy thus outlined, which had 
no less in view than the rehabilitation of Canada, 
the recovery of Nova Scotia, the mastery of the 
St. Lawrence, and the eventual restoration of 
French prestige in America, France had in thirty 
years created at Louisburg a fortress so strong 
that it was commonly spoken of as the Dunkirk 
of America. To do this she had lavished millions. 1 
Beyond question it was the most formidable place 
of arms on the American continent, far exceeding 
strength of * n this res P ec t the elaborate but anti- 
Louisburg. q U ated strongholds of Havana, Panama, 
and Carthagena, all of which had been built and 
fortified upon the old methods of attack and 
defence as laid down by the engineers of a pre- 
vious century : while Louisburg had the important 
advantage of being planned with all the skill that 



THE DECLARATION OF WAR 39 

the best military science of the day and the most 
prodigal expenditure could command. When their 
work was done, the French engineers boastingly 
said that Louisburg could be defended by a 
garrison of women. 

The fortress, and its supporting batteries, 
mounted nearly one hundred and fifty pieces of 
artillery on its walls, some of which were of the 
Armament of heaviest metal then in use. It was 
Lomsburg. deemed, and indeed proved itself, during 
the progress of two sieges, absolutely impregnable 
to an attack by a naval force alone. From this 
stronghold Louis had only to stretch out a hand to 
seize upon Nova Scotia, or drive the New England 
fishermen from the adjacent seas. 

In New England all these proceedings were 
watched with the keenest interest, for there, at 
least, if nowhere else, their true intent was so 
quickly foreseen, their consequences so fully 
realized, that the people were more and more 
confounded by the imbecility which had virtually 
put their whole fishery under French control. 

As the situation in Europe was reflected on this 
side of the Atlantic, it is instructive to look there 



40 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

for the storm which, to the terror and dismay of 
Americans, was now darkly overspreading the 
continent. 

The crowned gamblers of Europe had begun 

their costly game of the Austrian succession. 

Upon marching to invade Silesia, Frederick II., 

the neediest and most reckless gamester of them 

all, had said to the French ambassador, 

War of the 

Austrian Sue- " I am going, I believe, to play your 

cession. _. . * 

little game : and if I should throw 
doublets we will share the stakes." Fortune 
favored this great king of a little kingdom. He 
won his first throw, seeing which, for she was at 
first only a looker-on, France immediately sent two 
armies into Bavaria to the Elector's aid. This 
move was not unexpected in London. Ever since 
England had forced hostilities with Spain, in 1740, 
it was a foregone conclusion that the two branches 
of the House of Bourbon would make common 
cause, whenever a favorable opportunity should 
present itself. England now retaliated by voting 
a subsidy to Maria Theresa, and by taking into 
pay some sixteen thousand of King George's 
petted Hanoverians, who were destined to fight 



THE DECLARATION OF WAR 41 

the French auxiliary contingent. England and 
France were thus casting stones at each other over 
the wall, or, as Horace Walpole cleverly put it, 
England had the name of war with Spain without 
the game, and war with France without the name. 
It was inevitable that the war should now settle 
down into a bitter struggle between the two great 
rivals, France and England. On the 20th of 
March, 1744, the court of Versailles formally 
declared war. England followed on the 31st. 
Flanders became the battle-field between a hun- 
dred and twenty-five thousand combatants, led, 
respectively, by the old Count Maurice 

English J J 

defeated in de Saxe and the young Duke of Cum- 

Flanders. 

berland. In May, 1745, the French 
marshal suddenly invested Tournay, 2 the greatest 
of all the Flemish fortresses. The Duke of 
Cumberland marched to its relief, gave battle, and 
was thoroughly beaten at Fontenoy. This disaster 
closed the campaign in the Old World. It left the 
English nation terribly humiliated in the eyes of 
Europe, while France, by this brilliant feat of 
arms, fully reasserted her leadership in Continental 
affairs. 



42 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

But what had been a sort of Satanic pastime in 
the Old World became a struggle for life in the 
New. The people of New England, being natur- 
ally more keenly alive to the dangers menacing 
their trade, than influenced by a romantic sympa- 
thy with the absurd quarrels about the Austrian 
succession, anxiously watched for the first signal 
of the coming conflict. They knew the enemy's 
strength, and they were as fully aware of their 
own weaknesses. Still there was no flinching. 
The home government, being fully occupied with 
the affairs of the Continent, and with the political 
cabals of London, limited its efforts to arming a 
C-- ♦•„ ■„ few forts in the colonies, and to keeping 

situation in r o 

New England. a few cru j sers m t h e West Indian 
waters ; but neither soldiers, arsenals, nor maga- 
zines were provided for the defence of these 
provinces, upon whom the enemy's first and hardest 
blows might naturally be expected to fall, nor were 
such other measures taken to meet such an 
extraordinary emergency as its gravity would seem 
in reason to demand. 

Luckily for them, the colonists had been taught 
in the hard school of experience that Providence 



THE DECLARATION OF WAR 



P 



helps those who help themselves. To their own 
resources they therefore turned with a vigor and 
address manifesting a deep sense of the magnitude 
of the crisis now confronting them. 

The proclamation of war was not published in 
Boston until the 2d of June, 1744. Having earlier 
intelligence, the French at Louisburg had already 
French seize begun hostilities by making a descent 
canso. upon Canso, 3 a weak English post situ- 

ated at the outlet of the strait of that name, and 
so commanding it, and within easy striking dis- 
tance of Louisburg. News of this was brought to 
Boston so seasonably that Governor Shirley had 
time to throw a re-enforcement of two hundred 
men into Annapolis, by which that post was saved ; 
for the French, after their exploit at Canso, soon 
made an attempt upon Annapolis, where they 
were held in check until a second re-enforcement 
obliged them to retire. 

Governor Shirley lost no time in notifying the 
captain Ryai ministry of what had happened, and he 
don, Novem- particularly urged upon their attention 
ber, 1744. ^he defenceless state of Nova Scotia, 
where Annapolis alone held a semi-hostile popula- 



44 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

tion in check. To the end that the situation 
might be more fully understood, he sent an 
officer, who had been taken at Canso, with the 
despatch. 

At this time the incompetent Duke of New- 
castle held the post of prime minister. When he 
had read the despatch he exclaimed, " Oh, yes — 
yes — to be sure. Annapolis must be defended. — 
troops must be sent to Annapolis. Pray where is 
Annapolis ? Cape Breton an island ! wonderful ! 
Show it me on the map. So it is, sure enough. 
My dear sir" (to the bearer of the despatch), "you 
always bring us good news. I must go tell the 
King that Cape Breton is an island." 

It will be seen, later, that Shirley's timely ap- 
plication to the ministry, on behalf of Nova Scotia, 
involved the fate of Louisburg itself. 

January, 1744. 

Orders were promptly sent out to Com- 
modore Warren, who was in command of a cruising 
squadron in the West Indies, to proceed as early 
as possible to Nova Scotia, for the purpose of pro- 
tecting our settlements there, or of distressing the 
enemy, as circumstances might require. 

Shirley himself had also written to Warren, 



THE DECLARATION OF WAR 45 

requesting him to do this very thing, at the same 
time the ministry were notified, though it was yet 
too early to know the result of either application. 
All eyes were now opened to Louisburg's danger- 
ous power. But, come what might, Shirley was 
evidently a man who would leave nothing undone. 

1 Louisburg had cost the enormous sum of 30,000,000 livres or 
.£1,200,000 sterling. 

2 Pepperell was besieging Louisburg at the same time the French 
were Tournay. 

3 Canso was taken by Duvivier, May 13, 1744. The captors burnt 
everything, carrying the captives to Louisburg, where they remained till 
autumn, when they were sent to Boston. These prisoners were able to 
give very important information concerning the fortress, its garrison, and 
its means of defence. 



46 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 



V 

"LOUISBURG MUST BE TAKEN " 

However Shirley's efforts to avert a present 
danger might succeed, nobody saw more clearly 
than he did that his measures only went half way 
toward their mark. With Louisburg intact, the 
enemy might sweep the coasts of New England 
with their expeditions, and her commerce from 
the seas. The return of spring, when warlike 
operations might be again resumed, was therefore 
looked forward to at Boston with the utmost un- 
easiness. Merchants would not risk their ships 
on the ocean. Fishermen dared not think of put- 
ting to sea for their customary voyages to the 
Grand Banks or the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Here 
was a state of things which a people who lived by 
their commerce and fisheries could only contem- 
plate with the most serious forebodings. It was 
fully equivalent to a blockade of their ports, a 



" LOUISBURG MUST BE TAKEN 47 

stoppage of their industries, with consequent stag- 
nation paralyzing all their multitudinous occupa- 
tions. 

Naturally the subject became a foremost matter 
of discussion in the official and social circles, in 
the pulpits, and in the tavern clubs of the New 
public opinion England capital. It was the serious 
aroused. topic in the counting-house and the 
table-talk at home. It drifted out among the 
laboring classes, who had so much at stake, with 
varied embellishment. It went out into the coun- 
try, gathering to itself fresh rumors like a rolling 
snowball. In all these coteries, whether of the 
councillors over their wine, of the merchants 
around their punch-bowls, of the smutty smith at 
his forge, or the common dock-laborer, the same 
conclusion was reached, and constantly reiterated 
— Louisburg must be taken ! — Yes ; Louisburg 
must be taken ! Upon this decision the people 
stood as one man. 

It did not, however, enter into the minds of 
even the most sanguine advocates of this idea that 
they themselves would be shortly called upon to 
make it effective in the one way possible. Such 



48 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

a proposal would have been laughed at, at first. 
The general voice was that the land and naval 
forces of the kingdom ought to be employed for 
the reduction of Louisburg, because no others 
were available ; but, meantime, a public opinion 
had been formed which only wanted a proper 
direction to turn it into a force capable of doing 
what it had decided upon. There was but one 
man in the province who was equal to this task. 

That some other man may have had the same 
idea is but natural, when the same subject was 
uppermost in the minds of all ; but where others 
tossed it to and fro, like a tennis-ball, only this 
one man grasped it with the force of a master 
mind. 1 He was William Shirley, governor of 
Massachusetts. 

Governor Shirley soon showed himself the man 
for the crisis. He was a lawyer of good abilities, 
with a political reputation to make. He had a 
„,.„. clear head, strong will, plausible man- 

Shirley. ner> an ^ i mm0 vable persistency in the 

pursuit of a favorite project. If not a military 
man by education, he had, at any rate, the military 
instinct. He was, moreover, a shrewd manager, 



" LOUISBURG MUST BE TAKEN 49 

not easily disheartened or turned aside from his 
purpose by a first rebuff, yet knowing how to yield 
when, by doing so, he could see his way to carry 
his point in the end. 

The French, we remember, had made some 
prisoners at Canso, who were first taken to 
Louisburg, and then sent to Boston on parole. 
These captives knew the place, but our smuggling 
merchantmen knew it much better. They were 
able to give a pretty exact account of the condition 
of things at the fortress. We are now looking 
backward a little. But what seems to have made 
the strongest impression was the news that the 
garrison itself had been in open mutiny during the 
winter, most of the soldiers being Swiss, whose 
loyalty, it was supposed, had been more or less 
shaken. 2 

Whether William Vaughan, 3 a New Hampshire 
merchant resident in Maine, first broached the 
project of taking Louisburg to Shirley, cannot now 
wuiiam be determined, but, let the honor belong 

vaughan. primarily where it may, Vaughan's 
scheme, as outlined by him, was too absurd for 
serious consideration, however strongly he may 



5<D THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

have believed in it himself. He seems to have 
belonged to the class of enthusiasts at whose 
breath obstacles vanish away ; yet we are bound 
to say of him that his own easy confidence, with 
his habit of throwing himself heart and soul into 
whatever he undertook, gained over a good many 
others to his way of thinking. Shirley therefore 
encouraged Vaughan, who, after rendering really 
valuable services, became so thoroughly imbued 
with the notion that he was not only the originator 
of the expedition, but the chief actor in it, that 
the value of those services is somewhat obscured. 
Governor Shirley's project now was to take 
Louisburg, with such means as he himself could 
get together. He, too, was more or less carried 
away by the spirit which animated him, as men 
must be to make others believe in them, but he 
never lost his head. To a cool judgment, some of 
Shirley's plans for assaulting Louisburg seem 
almost, if not quite, as irrational as Vaughan's, 
yet Shirley was not the man to commit any overt 
act of folly, or shut his ears to prudent counsels. 
Being so well acquainted with the temper and 
spirit of the New England people, he knew that, 



" LOUISBURG MUST BE TAKEN 5 I 

before they would fight, they must be convinced. 
To this end, he strengthened himself with the 
proper arguments, wisely keeping his own counsel 
until everything should be ripe for action. He 
knew that the garrison of Louisburg was mutinous, 
that its isolated position invited an attack, and 
that the extensive works were much out of repair. 
Moreover, he had calculated, almost to a 

Counting the 

chances of day, the time when the annual supplies 

Success. , . 

of men and munitions would arrive from 
France. He knew that Quebec was too distant 
for effectively aiding Louisburg. An attack under 
such conditions seemed to hold out a tempting 
prospect of success ; yet realizing, as Shirley did, 
that under any circumstances, no matter how 
favorable or alluring they might seem, the enter- 
prise would be looked upon as one of unparalleled 
audacity, if not as utterly hopeless or visionary, 
he determined to stake his own political fortunes 
upon the issue and abide the result. 

The garrison of Louisburg had been, in fact, in 
open revolt, the outbreak proving so serious that 
the commanding officer had begged his govern- 
ment to replace the disaffected troops with others, 



52 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

who could be depended upon. Shirley, therefore, 

reckoned on a half-hearted resistance or none at 

all. In a word, it was his plan to sur- 

Shirley's Plan. 

prise and take the place before it could 
be re-enforced. 

After obtaining a pledge of secrecy from the 
members, Shirley proceeded to lay his project 
before the provincial legislature of Massachusetts, 
which was then in session. The governor's state- 
ment, which was certainly cool and dispassionate, 
ran somewhat to this effect : " Gentlemen of the 
General Court, either we must take Louisburg or 
see our trade annihilated. If you are of my mind 
we will take it. I have reason to know that the 
garrison is insubordinate. There is good ground 
for believing that the commandant is afraid of his 
own men, that the works are out of repair and 
the stores running low. I need not dwell further 
on what is so well known to you all. Now, with 
four thousand such soldiers as this and the 
neighboring provinces can furnish, aided by a 
naval force similarly equipped, the place must 
surely fall into our hands. I have, moreover, 
strong hopes of aid from His Majesty's ships, now 



" LOUISBURG MUST BE TAKEN " 53 

in our waters. But the great thing is to throw 
our forces upon Louisburg before the enemy can 
hear of our design. Secrecy and celerity are 
therefore of the last importance. Consider well, 
gentlemen, that such an opportunity is not likely 
to occur again. What say you ? is Louisburg to 
be ours or not ? " 

The conservative provincial assembly deliber- 
ated upon the proposal with closed doors, and with 
shiriey-s Plan S reat unanimity rejected it. The sum 
rejected. £ jj-g decision was this : " If we risk 

nothing, we lose nothing. Should the enemy 
strike us, we can strike back again. We can ruin 
his commerce as well as he can destroy ours. Our 
policy is to stand on the defensive. Very possi- 
bly the men might be raised, but where are the 
arsenals to equip them ; where is the money to 
come from to pay them ; where are the engineers, 
the artillerists, the siege artillery, naval stores, 
and all the warlike material necessary to such a 
siege ? Why, we haven't a single soldier ; we 
haven't a penny. Surely your excellency must be 
jesting with us. It is a magnificent project, but 
visionary, your excellency, quite visionary." 



54 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

To make use of parliamentary terms, the gov- 
ernor had leave to withdraw, but those who 
dreamed that he would abandon his darling scheme 
at the first rebuff it met with, did not know 
William Shirley. 

The affair was now no longer a secret. Indeed, 
it had already leaked out through a certain pious 
deacon, who most inconsiderately prayed for its 
success in the family circle. The project had been 
scotched, not killed. Men discussed it every- 
where, now that it was an open secret, and the 
more it was talked of, the more firmly it took hold 
on the popular mind. The very audacity of the 
thing pleased the young and adventurous spirits, 
of whom there were plenty in the New England 
of that clay. Vaughan now set himself to work 
among the merchants, who saw money to be made 
in furnishing supplies of every kind for the expe- 
dition ; while on the other hand, if nothing was to 
be done, their ships and merchandise must lie idle 
for so long as the war might last. Little by little 
the indefatigable Shirley won men over to his views. 
People grew restive under a policy of inaction. 
Public sentiment seldom fails of having a whole- 



" LOUISBURG MUST BE TAKEN 55 

some effect upon legislatures, be they ever so 

settled in their own opinions. It was so in this 

case. Presently a petition, signed by many of 

the most influential merchants in the 

The Subject 

again brought province, was laid on the speaker's desk, 

up. 

so again bringing the subject up for 
legislative action. 

This time the governor carried his point after 
a whole day's animated debate. The measure, 
however, narrowly missed a second, and, perhaps, 
a final defeat, it having a majority of one vote 
only ; and this result was owing to an accident 
which, as it was a good deal talked about at the 
time it happened, may as well be mentioned here. 
It so chanced that one of the opposition, while 
hurrying to the House in order to record his vote 
against the measure, had a fall in the street, and 
The Project was taken home with a broken leg. 
adopted. There being a tie vote in consequence, 
Mr. Speaker Hutchinson gave the casting vote in 
favor of the measure, and so carried it. 

If there had been hesitation before, there was 
none now. In order to prevent the news from 
getting abroad, all the seaports of Massachusetts 



56 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

were instantly shut by an embargo. 4 The neigh- 
boring provinces were entreated to do the same 
thing. The supplies asked for were voted without 
debate. Even the emission of paper money, that 
bugbear of colonial financiers, was cheerfully con- 
sented to in the face of a royal order forbidding it. 
Those who before had been strongest in opposi- 
tion now gave loyal support to the undertaking. 

Free to act at last, Shirley now showed his 
splendid talent for organizing in full vigor. The 
work of raising troops, of chartering transports, of 
collecting arms, munitions, and stores of every 
kind, went on with an extraordinary impulse. 
Common smiths were turned into armorers ; wheel- 
wrights into artificers ; women spent their evenings 
making bandages and scraping lint. Shirley's 
board of war, created for the exigency, took sup- 
plies wherever found, paying for them with the 
paper money the Legislature had just authorized 
for the purpose. The patience with which these 
extraordinary war measures were submitted to 
best shows the temper of the people. The neigh- 
boring governments were entreated to join in the 
expedition and share in the glory. Rhode Island, 



" LOUISBURG MUST BE TAKEN 57 

Connecticut, and New Jersey each promised con- 
tingents. The other provinces declined having 
anything to do with it, though New York made 
a most seasonable loan of ten heavy cannon, upon 
Shirley's urgent entreaty, without which the siege 
must have lagged painfully. The governor had, 
indeed, suggested, when the deficiency of artillery 
was spoken of, that the cannon of the Royal Bat- 
tery of Louisburg would help to make good that 
deficiency ; but, as it was facetiously said at the 
time, this was too manifest a disposal of the skin 
before the bear was- caught, though it is quite 
likely that the notion of supplying themselves 
from the enemy may have tickled the fancy of the 
young recruits. 

When the application reached Philadelphia, 
Franklin expressed shrewd doubts of the feasi- 
bility of the undertaking. The provincial assem- 
bly did, however, vote some supply of provisions, 
as its contribution toward a campaign which no- 
body believed would be successful. New Jersey 
also contributed provisions and clothing. This 
was not quite what Shirley had hoped for, but 
could not in the least abate his efforts. 



58 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

1 Suggestions looking to a conquest of Cape Breton were made by 
Lieutenant-Governor Clarke of New York, some time in the year 1743 
(" Documentary History of New York," I., p. 469). He suggests taking 
Cape Breton as a first step toward the reduction of all Canada. Then, 
Judge Auchmuty of the Vice-Admiralty Court of Massachusetts printed 
in April, 1744, an ably written pamphlet discussing the best mode of 
taking Louisburg. 

2 The Revolt occurred in December, over a reduction of pay. The 
soldiers deposed their officers, elected others in their places, seized the 
barracks, and put sentinels over the magazines. They were so far pacified, 
however, as to have returned to their duty before the English expedition 
arrived. Under date of June iS, one day after the surrender, Governor- 
General Beauharnois advises the Count de Maurepas of this revolt. He 
urges an entire change of the garrison. 

3 Vaughan was a mill-owner, and carried on fishing also at Damaris- 
cotta, Me. He knew Louisburg well. Conceiving himself slighted by 
those in authority at Louisburg, he went from thence directly to England, 
in order to prefer his claim for compensation as the originator of the 
scheme. He died of smallpox at Bagshot, November, 1747. He insisted 
that fifteen hundred men, assisted by some vessels, could take Louisburg 
by scaling the walls. "A man of rash, impulsive nature." — Belknap. 
" A whimsical, wild projector." ■ — Douglass. 

4 News that an armament was preparing at Boston was carried to 
Quebec, by the Indians, without, however, awakening the governor's 
suspicions of its true object. 



THE ARMY AND ITS GENERAL 59 



VI 



THE ARMY AND ITS GENERAL 

The next, and possibly most vital step of all, 
since the fate of the expedition must turn upon it, 
was to choose a commander. For this important 
station the province was quite as deficient in men 
of experience as it was in materials of war : with 
the difference that one could be created of raw 
substances while the other could not. Here the 
nicest tact and judgment were requisite to avoid 
making shipwreck of the whole enterprise. Not 
having a military man, the all-important thing was 
to find a popular one, around whom the provincial 
yeomanry could be induced to rally. But since he 
was not to be a soldier, he must be a man held 
high in the public esteem for his civic virtues. It 
was necessary to have a clean man, above all 
things : one placed outside of the political circles 
of Boston, and who, by sacrificing something him- 
self to the common weal, should set an example of 



60 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

pure patriotism to his fellow-citizens. Again, it 
was no less important to select some one whose 
general capacity could not be called in question. 
Hence, as in every real emergency, the people 
cast about for their very best man from a politi- 
cal and personal standpoint, who, though he might 

have 

" Never set a squadron in the field," 

could be thoroughly depended upon to act with 
an eye single to the good of the cause he had 
espoused. 

In this exigency Shirley's clear eye fell on 

William Pepperell, of Kittery, a gentleman of 

sterling though not shining qualities, whose 

wealth, social rank, and high personal worth 

promised to give character and weight 

William Pep- , , 

pereii to com- to the post Shirley now destined him 
for. He was now forty-nine years old. 
Having held both civil and military offices under 
the province, Pepperell could not be said to be 
worse fitted for the place than others whose claims 
were brought forward, while, on the other hand, it 
was conceded that hardly another man in the 
province possessed the public confidence to a 



THE ARMY AND ITS GENERAL 6l 

greater degree than he did. Still, he was no 
soldier, and the simple conferring of the title of 
general could not make him one, while . his 
practical education must begin in the presence of 
the enemy — a school where, if capable men learn 
quickly, they do so, as a rule, only after experienc- 
ing repeated and severe punishments. That raw 
soldiers need the best generals, is a maxim of 
common-sense, but Shirley, in whom we now and 
then discover a certain disdain for such judgments, 
seems to have had no misgivings whatever as to 
Pepperell's entire sufficiency so long as he, Shirley, 
gave the orders, and kept a firm hand over his 
lieutenant ; nor can it be denied that if the expe- 
dition was to take place at all when it did, the 
choice was the very best that could have been 
made, all things considered. 

That Shirley may have been influenced, in a 
measure, by personal reasons is not improbable, and 
the fact that Pepperell was neither intriguing nor 
ambitious, no doubt had due weight with a man 
like Shirley, who was both intriguing and ambi- 
tious, and who, though he ardently wished for 
success, did not wish for a rival. 



62 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

No one seems to have felt his unfitness more 
than Pepperell himself, and it is equally to his 
honor that he finally yielded to considerations 
directly appealing to his patriotism and sense of 
duty. "You," said Shirley to him, "are the only 
man who can safely carry our great enterprise 
through ; if it fail the blame must lie at your 
door." Much troubled in mind, Pepperell asked 
the Rev. George Whitefield, who happened to be 
his guest, what he thought of it. The celebrated 
preacher kindly, but decidedly, advised Pepperell 
against taking on himself so great a responsi- 
bility, telling him that he would either make him- 
self an object for execration, if he failed, or of 
envy and malignity, if he should succeed. 

Shirley's pertinacity, however, prevailed in the 
end. Pepperell's own personal stake in the suc- 
cessful issue of the expedition was known to be as 
great as any man's in the province, hence, his 
.. , c «. putting himself at the head of it did 

Morale of the r o 

Army. much to induce others of like good 

standing and estate to join him heart and hand, 
and their example, again, drew into the ranks a 
greater proportion of the well-to-do farmers and 



THE ARMY AND ITS GENERAL 63 

mechanics than was probably ever brought 
together in an army of equal numbers, eithe/ 
before or since. Hence, at Louisburg, as in our 
own time, when any extraordinary want arose, the 
general had only to call on the rank and file for 
the means to meet it. 

Several gentlemen, who had the success of the 
undertaking strongly at heart, volunteered to go 
with Pepperell to the scene of action. Among 
them were that William Vaughan, previously 
mentioned, and one James Gibson, a prominent 
merchant of Boston, who wrote a journal of the 
siege from observations made on the spot, besides 
contributing five hundred pounds toward equipping 
the army for its work. 1 

Pepperell's appointment soon justified Shirley's 
forecast. It gave general satisfaction among all 
ranks and orders of men. On the day that he 
accepted the command Pepperell advanced five 
thousand pounds to the provincial treasury. He 
also paid out of his own pocket the bounty money 
offered to recruits in the regiment he was raising 
in Maine. Orders were soon flying in every 
direction, and very .soon everything caught the 



64 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

infection of his energy. The expedition at once 
felt an extraordinary momentum. Volunteers 
flocked to the different rendezvous. In fact, 
more offered themselves than could be accepted. 
Again the loud burr of the drum, 

" The drums that beat at Louisburg and thundered in Quebec," 

was heard throughout New England. The one 
question of the day was " Are you going ? " In 
fact, little else was talked of, for, now that the 
mustering of armed men gave form and consist- 
ency to what was so lately a crude project only, 
the fortunes of the province were felt to be 
embarked in its success. True to its traditions, 
a crusade tne c ^ Qr SY preached the expedition into 
preached. a cr u S ade. Again the old bugbear of 
Romish aggression was made to serve the turn of 
the hour. Religious antipathies were inflamed to 
the point of fanaticism. One clergyman armed 
himself with a large hatchet, with which he said 
he purposed chopping up into kindling wood all 
the Popish images he should find adorning the 
altars of Louisburg. Still another drew up a plan 
of campaign which he submitted to the general. 



THE ARMY AND ITS GENERAL 65 

" Carthage must be destroyed ! " became the 
watchword, while to show the hand of God power- 
fully working for the right, the celebrated George 
Whitefield wrote the Latin motto, embroidered on 
the expeditionary standard, — 

" Never despair, Christ is with us." 

Thus the church militant was not only repre- 
sented in the ranks and on the banner, but it was 
equally forward in proffering counsel. For exam- 
ple : one minister wrote to acquaint Shirley how 
the provincials should be saved from being blown 
up, in their camps, by the enemy's mines. He 
wanted a patrol to go carefully over the camping- 
ground first. While one struck the ground with 
a heavy mallet, another should lay his ear to it, 
and if it sounded suspiciously hollow, he should 
instantly drive down a stake in order that the spot 
might be avoided. 

Such anecdotes show us how earnestly all classes 
of men entered upon the work in hand. How to 
take Louisburg seemed the one engrossing subject 
of every man's thoughts. 

Having glanced at the qualifications of the gen- 



66 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

eral, we may now consider the composition of the 
army. We have already drawn attention to the 
excellent quality of its material. In embodying it 
for actual service, the old traditions of the British 
army were strictly followed. 

The expeditionary corps was formed in ten bat- 
talions. They were Pepperell's, 2 Wolcott's 3 (of 
T , . . Connecticut), Waldo's, 4 Dwight's 5 (nom- 

1 he Army by ,J o \ 

Regiments. j na Hy an artillery battalion), Moulton's, 6 
Willard's, Hale's, 7 Richmond's, 8 Gorham's, and 
Moore's 9 (of New Hampshire). One hundred and 
fifty men of this regiment were in the pay of 
Massachusetts. Pepperell's, Waldo's, and Moul- 
ton's were mostly raised in the District of Maine. 
Pepperell said that one-third of the whole force 
came from Maine. Dwight was assigned to the 
command of the artillery, with the rank of briga- 
dier ; Gorham to the special service of landing the 
troops in the whaleboats, which had been provided, 
and of which he had charge. There was also an 
independent company of artificers, under Captain 
Bernard, and Lieutenant-Colonel Gridley was 
appointed chief engineer of the army. 

Pepperell held the rank of lieutenant-general ; 



THE ARMY AND ITS GENERAL 67 

Wolcott, that of major-general ; and Waldo that 
of brigadier, the second place being given to Con- 
necticut, in recognition of the prompt and valuable 
assistance given by that colony. 

As a whole, the army was neither well armed 
nor properly equipped, or sufficiently provided 
it goes badly Wlt ^ tents > ammunition, and stores, 
eqmpped. j 0Q mucn haste had characterized its 
formation for a thorough organization, or for atten- 
tion to details, too little knowledge for the instruc- 
tion in their duties of either officers or men. It 
is true that some of them had seen more or less 
bush-fighting in the Indian wars, and that all were 
expert marksmen or skilful woodsmen, but to call 
such an unwieldy and undisciplined assemblage 
of men, who had been thus suddenly called away 
from their workshops and ploughs, an army, were 
a libel upon the name. 

Commodore Edward Tyng 10 was put in com- 
mand of the colonial squadron destined to escort 
the army to its destination, to cover its landing, 
and afterwards to act in conjunction with it on the 
spot. 

The writers of the time tell us that " the winter 



68 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

proved so favorable that all sorts of outdoor busi- 
ness was carried on as well, and with as great de- 
Hutchinson spatch, as at any other season of the 
Belknap. year." The month of February, in par- 
ticular, proved very mild. The rivers and harbors 
were open, and the fruitfulness of the preceding 
season had made provisions plenty. Douglass 
thinks that " some guardian angel " must have 
preserved the troops from taking the small-pox, 
which broke out in Boston about the time of their 
embarkation. All these fortunate accidents were 
hailed as omens of success. 

Thanks to the enthusiasm of the young men in 
enlisting, and the energy of the authorities in 
equipping them, the four thousand men called for 
were mustered under arms, ready for service, in a 
little more than seven weeks. In this short time, 
The Provincial too » a hundred transports had been 
Navy ' manned, victualled, and got ready for 

sea. The embargo had provided both vessels and 
sailors. More than this, a little squadron of four- 
teen vessels, the largest carrying only twenty 
guns, was created as if by enchantment. Here 
was shown a vi^or that deserved success. 



THE ARMY AND ITS GENERAL 69 

The Connecticut and New Hampshire contin- 
gents were also ready to march, but Rhode Island 
had not yet completed hers. By disarming Cas- 
tle William in Boston harbor, or borrowing old 
cannon wherever they could be found, Shirley 
had managed to get together a sort of makeshift 
for a siege-train. All being ready at last, after a 
day of solemn fasting and prayer throughout New 
England, the flotilla set sail for the rendezvous at 
Canso in the last week of March. " Pray for us 
while we fight for you," was the last message of 
the departing provincial soldiers to their friends 
on shore. 

Equal good-fortune attended the transportation 
of the army by sea to a point several hundred 
miles distant, during one of the stormiest months 
of the year. By the 10th of April the whole force 
was assembled at Canso in readiness to act 
offensively as soon as the Cape Breton shores 
should be free of ice. All this had been done 
without the help of a soldier, a ship, or a penny 
from England. At the very last moment Shirley 
received from Commodore Warren, in answer to 
his request for assistance, a curt refusal to take 



yO THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

part in the enterprise without orders, and Shirley 
could only say to Pepperell when he took leave of 
him, that his best and only hope lay in his own 
resources. 

But by this time the enthusiasm which had 
carried men off their feet had begun to cool. The 
excitements, under the influence of which this 
or that obstacle had been impatiently brushed 
aside, had given way to the sober second thought. 
One by one they rose grimly before Pepperell's 
troubled vision like the ghosts in Macbeth. Land 
the troops and storm the works had been the 
popular way of disposing of a fortress which the 
French engineers had offered to defend with a 
garrison of women. 

1 Gibson was very active during the siege, especially when anything of 
a dangerous nature was to be done. He was a retired British officer. He 
was one of the three who escaped death, while on a scout, May 10. With 
five men he towed a fireship against the West Gate, under the enemy's 
fire, on the night of May 24. It burnt three vessels, part of the King's 
Gate, and part of a stone house in the city. Being done in the dead of 
night, it caused great consternation among the besieged. 

2 Pepperell's own regiment was actually commanded by his lieuten- 
ant-colonel, John Bradstreet, who was afterwards appointed lieutenant- 
governor of Newfoundland, but on the breaking out of the next war with 
France, he served with distinction on the New-York frontier, rising 



THE ARMY AND ITS GENERAL 71 

through successive grades to that of major-general in the British army. 
Bradstreet died at New York in 1774. 

3 General Roger Wolcott had been in the Canada campaign of 
171 1 without seeing any service. He was sixty-six when appointed over the 
Connecticut contingent under Pepperell. Wolcott was one of the fore- 
most men of his colony, being repeatedly honored with the highest posts, 
those of chief judge and governor included. David Wooster was a 
captain in Wolcott's regiment. 

4 Samuee Waldo was a Boston merchant, who had acquired a chief 
interest in the Muscongus, later known from him as the Waldo Patent, 
in Maine, to the improvement of which he gave the best years of his 
life. Like Pepperell, he was a wealthy land-owner. They were close 
friends, Waldo's daughter being betrothed to Pepperell's son later. His 
patent finally passed to General Knox, who married Waldo's grand- 
daughter. 

5 Joseph Dwight was born at Dedham, Mass., in 1703. He served in 
the Second French War also. Pepperell commends his services, as chief 
of artillery, very highly. 

6 Jeremiah Moulton was fifty-seven when he joined the expedition. 
He had seen more actual fighting than any other officer in it. Taken 
prisoner by the Indians at the sacking of York, when four years old, he 
became a terror to them in his manhood. With Harmon he destroyed 
Norridgewock in 1724. 

7 Robert Hale, colonel of the Essex County regiment, had been a 
schoolmaster, a doctor, and a justice of the peace. He was forty-two. His 
major, Moses Titcomb, afterwards served under Sir William Johnson, and 
was killed at the battle of Lake George. 

8 Sylvester Richmond, of Dighton, Mass., was born in 169S ; colonel 
of the Bristol County regiment. He was high sheriff of the county for 
many years after his return from Louisburg. Died in 17S3, in his eighty- 
fourth year. Lieutenant-Colonel Ebenezer Pitts of Dighton, and Major 



72 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

Joseph Hodges of Norton, of Richmond's regiment, were both killed 
during the campaign. 

9 Samuel Moore's New Hampshire regiment was drafted into the 
Vigilant. His lieutenant-colonel, Meserve, afterward served under 
Ab;rcromby, and again in the second siege of Louisburg under Amherst, 
dying there of small-pox. Matthew Thornton, signer of the Declaration, 
was surgeon of Moore's regiment. 

i° Edward Tyng, merchant of Boston, son of that Colonel Edward 
who was carried a prisoner to France, with John Nelson, by Frontenac's 
order, and died there in a dungeon. 



THE ARMY AT CANSO J$ 



VII 

THE ARMY AT CANSO 

The crude plan of attack, as digested at Boston, 
consisted in an investment of Louisburg by the 
_. D1 , land forces and a blockade by sea. To 

The Plan of -' 

Attack. enforce this blockade, Shirley had sent 

out some armed vessels in advance of the expedi- 
tion, with orders to cruise off the island, and to 
intercept all vessels they should fall in with, so 
that news of the armament might not get into 
Louisburg, by any chance, before its coming. 

This was all the more necessary because Shirley 
had indulged hopes, from the first, of taking the 
Shirie 's place by surprise, and so obstinately 
Project. was Y\q wedded to the notion that the 

thing was practicable, that he had drawn up at 
great length a plan of campaign of which this 
surprise was the chief feature, and in which he 
undertook to direct, down to the minutest detail, 



74 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

where, how, and when the troops should land, 
what points they should attack, what they should 
do if the assault proved a failure or only partially 
successful, where they should encamp, raise bat- 
teries and post guards ; how the men must be 
handled under fire, and even how the prisoners 
should be disposed of, for Shirley, as we have 
seen, was considerably given to counting his 
chickens before they were hatched. 

Being a lawyer rather than a soldier, Shirley 
had written out a brief instead of an order — clear, 
concise, direct. But, lengthy as it was, the plan 
a savin na< ^ one redeeming feature, which turns 

clause. away criticism from the absurdities with 

which it was running over. This was the post- 
script appended to it : " Sir, upon the whole, 
notwithstanding the instructions you have received 
from me, I must leave it to you to act upon 
unforeseen emergencies according to your best 
discretion." The reading of it must have lifted a 
load from Pepperell's mind ! It really looked as if 
Shirley had meant to be the real generalissimo 
himself, and to capture Louisburg by proxy. 

Pepperell was still hampered, however, with a 



THE ARMY AT CANSO 75 

council of war, consisting of all the general and 
field officers of his army, whom he was required 
D „, to summon to his aid in all emergencies. 

Pepperell s o 

council. jf it be true that j n a mu ititude of 

counsels there is wisdom, then Pepperell was to be 
well advised, for his council aggregated between 
twenty and thirty members. 

Pepperell seems to have conceived that he ought 
to submit himself wholly to Shirley's guidance, 
since he himself was now to serve his first 
apprenticeship in war, for it was now loyally 
attempted to carry out Shirley's instructions to 
the letter. In all these preliminary arrangements 
the difference between Shirley's brilliancy and 
dash and Pepperell's methodical cast of mind is 
very marked indeed. It would sometimes seem 
as if the two men ought to have changed places. 

Shirley had appointed the rendezvous to be at 

Canso, which place had been abandoned soon 

after it was taken from us ; first, be- 

Why the 

army was at cause it was the natural base for opera- 

Canso. . 

tions against Cape Breton, and next so 
that if the descent on Louisburg failed, Canso 
and the command of the straits would, at least, 



j6 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

have been recovered. It was, as we have said, 
within easy striking distance of Louisburg. Out 
in front of Canso, between the Nova Scotia and 
Cape Breton shores, lay Isle Madame or Arichat, 
on which a few French fishermen were living. 
Across the water from Arichat, at the entrance to 
. . , the Bras d'Or, lay the village of St. 

Importance of ' J ° 

st. Peter's. Peter's, the second in point of impor- 
tance in Cape Breton, Louisburg being the first. 
At Arichat everything that was being done at 
Canso could be easily seen and communicated to 
St. Peter's. At St. Peter's word could be sent to 
Louisburg by way of the Bras d'Or Lakes. It 
therefore stood Pepperell in hand to clear his 
vicinity of these spies and informers without 
delay, unless he wished to find the enemy fore- 
warned and forearmed. 

Shirley had directed Pepperell to destroy St. 
Peter's. Pepperell, therefore, sent a night expedi- 
tion there, which, however, returned 

The Ice Block- 
ade at Louis- without accomplishing its purpose. But 

Dur g- 

his greatest fear, lest supplies or re-en- 
forcements should get into Louisburg by sea, was 
set at rest on finding that the field or pack-ice, 



THE ARMY AT CANSO 77 

which had come down out of the St. Lawrence, 
and the east winds had driven up against the 
shores of Cape Breton, formed a secure blockade 
against all comers, himself as well as the enemy. 
This contingency had not been sufficiently 
weighed. 

Meanwhile, Pepperell set to work fortifying 

Canso. A blockhouse, ready framed, had been 

sent out for the purpose. This was now 

Canso fortified. 

set up, garrisoned, and christened Fort 
Prince William. Some earthworks were also 
thrown up to cover this new post. In these occu- 
pations, or in scouting or exercising, the troops 
were kept employed until the ice should move off 
the shores. 

On the 1 8th of April a French thirty-gun ship 
was chased off the coast, while trying to run into 
French cruiser Louisburg. Being the better sailer, she 
dnven off. easily got clear of the blockading ves- 
sels, after keeping up for some hours a sharp, run- 
ning fight. Even this occurrence does not seem 
to have fully opened the eyes of the French com- 
mandant of Louisburg to the true nature of the 
danger which threatened him, since he has declared 



?8 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

that he thought the vessels he saw watching the 
harbor were only English privateers. Perhaps 
nothing about the whole history of this expedition 
is more strange than that this officer should have 
remained wholly ignorant of its being at Canso for 
nearly three weeks. 

The army had been lying nearly two weeks in- 
active, when, to Pepperell's great surprise as well 
as joy, Commodore Warren appeared 

April 23, War- 
ren's Fleet off Canso with four ships of war, and, 

arrives. 

after briefly communicating with the 
general, bore away for Louisburg. At last he had 
received his orders to act in concert with Shirley, 
and, like a true sailor, he had crowded all sail for 
Effect on the tne scene of action. His coming put 
Army. ^q army in great spirits, for it was sup- 

posed to be part of the plan, already concerted, by 
which the attack should be made irresistible. And 
for once fortune seems to have determined that 
the bungling of ministers should not defeat the 
objects had in view. 

On the following day, the Connecticut forces 
joined Pepperell. The shores of Cape Breton were 
now eagerly scanned for the first appearance of 



THE ARMY AT CANSO 79 

open water, but even as late as the 28th Pepperell 

wrote to Shirley, saying, "We impatiently wait 

for a fair wind to drive the ice out 

April 24, 

Connecticut of the bay, and if we do not suffer for 

Forces strive. 

want of provisions, make no doubt but 
we shall, by God's favor, be able soon to drive 
out what else we please from Cape Breton." The 
consumption of stores, occasioned by the unlooked- 
for detention at Canso, had, in fact, become a 
matter of serious concern with Pepperell, whose 
nearest source of supply was Boston. 



SO THE TAKING OF LOUlSliUKG 



VIII 

THE SIEGE 

Our guard-vessels having reported the shores 

to be at last free from ice, and the wind coming 

fair for Louisburg, the welcome signal 

Fleet sails ° & 

fromCanso, to weigh anchor was given on the 

April 29. 

29th of April. On board the fleet all 
was now bustle and excitement. In a very short 
time a hundred transport-vessels were standing 
out of Canso Harbor, under a cloud of canvas, for 
Gabarus Bay, the place fixed upon by Shirley for 
making the contemplated descent. 

Bound to the letter of his orders, Pepperell 
seems to have first purposed making an attempt 
to put Shirley's rash project in execution. To do 
Night Assault tn ^ s ' h e must have so timed his move- 
given up. ments as to reach his anchorage after 
dark, have landed his troops without being able to 
see what obstacles lay before them, have marched 



THE SIEGE S$ 

them to stations situated at a distance from the 
place of disembarkation, over ground unknown, 
and not previously reconnoitred, to throw them 
against the enemy's works before they should be 
discovered. And this most critical of all military 
operations, a night assault, was to be attempted 
by wholly undisciplined men. 

Providentially for Pepperell, the wind died away 
before he could reach the designated point of dis- 
embarkation, so that this mad scheme perished 
before it could be put to the test ; but early the 
next morning the flotilla was discovered entering 
Gabarus Bay, five miles southeast from the fort- 
ress, and in full view from its ramparts. So, also, 
the New England forces could see the gray turrets 
of the redoubtable stronghold, rising in the dis- 
tance, and could hear the bells of Louisburg peal- 
ing out their loud alarm. The fortress instantly 
fired signal guns to call in all out parties. It is 
said that there had been a grand ball the night 
before, and that the company had scarce been 
asleep when called up by this alarm. The boom- 
ing of artillery, sounding like the drowsy roar of 
an awakening lion, was defiantly echoed back from 



84 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

the bosom of the deep, and borne on the cool 
breeze to the startled foemen's ears the distant 
roll of drum, and bugle blast, peopled the lately 
deserted sea with voices of the coming strife. 

Duchambon, commander of the fortress, in- 
stantly hurried off a hundred and fifty men to 
oppose the landing of our troops. 

The fleet quickly came to an anchor, and the 
signal was hoisted for the troops to disembark at 
once. Before them stretched the lonely Cape 
Breton shore, on which the breakers rose and fell 
in a long line of foam. Though this heavy surf 
threatened to swamp the boats, the men crowded 
into them as if going to a merry-making. 

Landing at 

Gabams Bay, It was a gallant and inspiring sight to 
see them dash on toward the beach, 
emulous who should reach it first, and eager to 
meet the enemy, who were waiting for them there. 
By making a feint at one point, and then pulling 
for another at some distance from the first, the 
boats gained an undefended part of the shore 
before the French could come up with them. As 
soon as one struck the ground, the men jumped 
into the water, each taking another on his back 



THE SIEGE 85 

and wading through the surf to the shore. In 
this manner the landing went on so rapidly that, 
when the enemy finally came up, they were easily 
driven off, with the loss of six or seven men killed, 
and some prisoners. Before it was dark two thou- 
sand men bivouacked for the night within cannon 
shot of Louisburg. 

Vaughan now led forward a party after the 
retreating enemy, who, finding themselves pur- 
sued, set fire to thirty or forty houses outside the 
city walls. 

On the next day, the work of landing the 
rest of the army, the artillery and stores, was 
pushed to the utmost, though the heavy surf 
rendered this a work of uncommon difficulty. 
Pepperell now pitched his camp in an orderly 
manner next the shore, at a place called Flat Point 
Cove, where he could communicate with the 
transports and fleet, and they with him. He now 
took his first step towards clearing the two miles 
of open ground lying between him and Louisburg 
harbor, with the view of fixing the location of his 
batteries, and of driving the enemy inside the 
walls of the fortress. 



86 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG. 

To this end four hundred men were sent out to 
destroy the enemy's magazines situated at the 
head of the harbor, Vaughan again marching with 
them. This detachment having set fire to some 
Royai Battery warehouses containing naval stores, the 
deserted. smoke from which drifted clown upon 
the Royal Battery, the officer in command there, 
convinced that the provincials were about to fall 
upon him, spiked his cannon and abandoned the 
works in haste, though not till after receiving 
permission to do so. 

In the morning, as Vaughan was returning to 
camp with only thirteen men, the deserted 
appearance of the battery caused him to carefully 
examine it, when, seeing no signs of life about the 
place, — no flag flying or smoke rising or sentinels 
moving about, — he sent forward an Indian of his 
party, who, finding all silent, crept through an 
embrasure, and undid the gate to them. Vaughan 
then despatched word to the camp that he was in 
possession of the place, and was waiting for a 
re-enforcement and a flag ; but meantime, before 
either could reach him, one of his men climbed up 
the staff, and nailed his red coat to it for a flag. 



THE SIEGE 87 

At about the same hour Duchambon was send- 
ing a strong detachment back to the battery, to 
complete the work of destruction that his lieuten- 
,, . ant had left unfinished. At least this is 

Vaugnan 

attacked. n j s own statement. It was supposed 
that the battery was still unoccupied or occupied 
weakly, otherwise the French would hardly have 
risked much for its possession. When this 
detachment came round in their boats to the land- 
ing-place, near the battery, Vaughan's little band 
attacked them with great spirit, keeping them at 
bay until other troops had time to join him, when 
the discomfited Frenchmen were driven back 
whence they came. 

Thus unexpectedly did one of the most formi- 
dable defences fall into our hands ; for though its 
isolated situation invited an attack, and though 
communication with the city could be easily cut 
Advantage of off exce Pt b Y water, the prompt attempt 
this capture. to recover the Royal Battery implies 
that its abandonment was at least premature. Yet 
as this work was primarily a harbor defence only, 
it was evidently not looked upon as tenable against 
a land attack, although it is quite as clear that the 



88 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

time had not yet come for deserting it. But the 
fact that it was left uninjured instead of being 
blown up assures us that the garrison must have 
left in a panic. 

But whether the French attached much or little 
consequence to this battery so long as it remained 
in their hands, it became in ours a tremendous 
auxiliary to the conquest of the city. By its 
capture we obtained thirty heavy cannon, all of 
which were soon made serviceable, besides a large 
quantity of shot and shell, than which nothing 
could have been more acceptable at this time. 
And although only three or four of its heavy guns 
could be trained upon the city, its capture 
removed one of the most formidable obstacles to 
the entrance of our fleet. It also afforded an 
excellent place of arms for our soldiers, whose 
confidence was greatly strengthened. In a word, 
the siege was making progress. 

We cannot help referring here to the fact that 
notwithstanding Shirley's idea had met with so 
much ridicule it had, nevertheless, come true in 
one part at least, since if the proposal to turn the 
enemy's own cannon against them had seemed 



THE SIEGE 89 

somewhat whimsical when it was broached, it 

certainly proved prophetic in this case, for within 

twenty-four hours after its taking the guns of the 

Royal Battery were thundering against the city. 

Pepperell had at once ordered Waldo's regiment 

into the captured battery. The enemy had not 

even stopped to knock off the trunnions of the 

cannon, so that the smiths, under the direction of 

Major Pomeroy, 1 who was himself a gun- 
Firing begun. 

smith, had only to drill them out again. 

Waldo fired the first shot into the city. It is said 
to have killed fourteen men. The fire was main- 
tained with destructive effect, and it drew forth a 
reply from the enemy, with both shot and shell. 

The siege may now be said to have fairly begun, 
and begun prosperously. Both sides had stripped 
for fighting, and it remained to be seen whether 
Pepperell's raw levies would continue steadfast 
under the many trials of which these events were 
but a foretaste. 

Louisburg was. now practically invested on the 
land side, the fleet, with its heavy armament, 
remaining useless, however, with respect to active 
co-operation in the siege itself, because its com- 



90 THE TAKTNG OF LOUISBURG 

mancler dared not take his ships into the harbor 
under fire of the enemy's batteries. The army 
and navy were acting therefore without that con- 
cert which alone would have allowed their united 
strength to be effectively tested. On its part, the 
navy was simply making a display of force which 
could not be employed, though it maintained a 
strict blockade. In any case, then, the brunt of 
the siege must fall on the army, since, as Warren 
informed Pepperell, the fleet could take no part in 
battering the city until the harbor defences should 
first have been taken or silenced. And when this 
was done, the siege must probably have been near 
its end, fleet or no fleet. 

Pepperell manfully turned, however, to a task 
which he had supposed would be shared between 
the commodore and himself. If he was no longer 
confident under fresh disappointments, they devel- 
oped in him unexpected firmness and most heroic 
patience. Let us see what this task was, and in 
what manner the citizen-general set about it. 
That it was clone with true military judgment is 
abundantly proved by the fact that, when Louis- 
burg was assaulted and taken in 1758, by the com- 



THE SIEGE 93 

bined land and naval forces of Amherst and Bos- 
cawen, Pepperell's plan of attack was followed 
step by step, and to the letter. 

The most formidable of the harbor defences 
were the Island Battery, to which attention has 
„. „ . been called in a previous chapter, the 

The Harbor L 

Defences. Circular Battery, a work situated at the 
extreme northwest corner of the city walls, and 
forming the reverse face of the powerful Dauphin 
Bastion, from which the West Gate of the city 
opened, with the Water Battery, or Batterie de la 
Greve, placed at the opposite angle of the harbor 
shore. 2 The cross-fire from these two batteries 
effectually raked the whole harbor from shore to 
shore, but it was by no means so dangerous as 
that of the Island Battery, where ships must pass 
within point-blank range of the heaviest artillery. 

Such, then, was the admirable system of harbor 
defences still remaining intact, even after the fall 
of the Royal Battery. Instead, therefore, of con- 
centrating his whole fire upon one or two points, 
in his front, with a view of breaching the walls in 
the shortest time, and of storming the city at the 
head of his troops, Pepperell was made to throw 



94 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

half his available fire upon the batteries that were 
not at all in his own way, though they blocked the 
way to the fleet. 3 

It will be seen that these circumstances imposed 
upon Pepperell a task of no little magnitude. 
They compelled him to attack the very strongest, 
instead of the weakest, parts of the fortress, and 
necessarily confined the siege operations within a 
comparatively small space of the enemy's long line. 

No time was lost in getting the siege train over 
from Gabarus Bay to the positions marked out for 
erecting the breaching batteries. The infinite 
labor involved in doing this can hardly be under- 
stood except by those who have themselves gone 
over the ground. Every gun and every pound of 
provisions and ammunition had to be dragged two 
miles, through marshes and over rocks, to the 
allotted stations. This transit being impracticable 
for wheel-carriages, sledges were constructed by 
Lieutenant-Colonel Meserve of the New Hamp- 
shire regiment, to which relays of men harnessed 
themselves in turn, as they do in Arctic journeys, 
and in this way the cannon, mortars, and stores 
were slowly dragged through the spongy turf, 



THE SIEGE 95 

where the mud was frequently knee-deep, to the 
trenches before Louisburg. None but the rugged 
yeomen of New England — men inured to all sorts 
of outdoor labor in woods and fields — could have 
successfully accomplished such a herculean task. 
But such severe toil as this was soon put half the 
army in the hospitals. 

By the 5th of May Pepperell had got two mor- 
tar-batteries playing upon the city from the base 
of Green Hill, over which the road passes to 
Sydney. Meantime, Duchambon, seeing himself 
blockaded both by sea and by land, had hurriedly 
sent off an express to recall the troops that had 
gone out some time before against Annapolis, in 
concert with a force sent from Quebec, 

Nova Scotia 

freed of in- little dreaming that he himself would 

vaders. 

soon be attacked. 4 The first fruits of 
Shirley's sagacity ripened thus early in relieving 
Nova Scotia from invasion. 

The 5th being Sunday, divine service was held 
First sabbath * n ^ ie chapel of the Royal Battery, 
in camp. Pepperell's hardy New En-glanders list- 
ened to the first Protestant sermon ever preached, 
perhaps, on the island of Cape Breton, from the 



96 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

well-chosen text "Enter into His gates with 
thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise." 
After their devotions were over, we are told that 
the troops " fired smartly at the city." 

Meantime, also, Colonel Moulton, who had been 
left at Canso for the purpose, rejoined the army 
after destroying St. Peter's. Two sallies made by 
the enemy against the nearest mortar-battery had 
been repulsed. Its fire, augmented by some forty- 
two-pounders taken from the Royal Battery, already 
much distressed the garrison, its balls coming 
against the caserns and into the town, where they 
traversed the streets from end to end, and riddled 
the houses in their passage. It never ceased firing 
during the siege. In his report Duchambon calls 
it the most dangerous of any that the besiegers 
raised. 

On the 7th a flag was sent into the city with a 
summons to surrender. Firing was suspended 
„ . until its return, with Duchambon's defi- 

Garnson sum- ' 

moned. ant message, that inasmuch " as the 

King had confided to him the defence of the fort- 
ress, he had no other reply but by the mouths of 
his cannon." 



THE SIEGE 97 

This check prompted a disposition to attack the 
city hy storm at once, but upon reflection more 
moderate counsels prevailed, and the attempt was 
put off. Pepperell went on with his approaches 
toward the West Gate, under a constant fire from 
all the enemy's batteries. And as every collection 
of men drew the enemy's fire to the spot, this 
work could only be done at night, under great dis- 
advantages. The balls they sent him were picked 
up and returned from his own cannon with true 
New England thrift, in order to husband his own 
ammunition. While thus engaged with the enemy 
in his front, he had also to keep an eye upon the 
outlying parties of French and Indians in his rear, 
who had been scraped together from scattered set- 
tlements, and were lurking about his camp with 
the view of raiding it unawares. On May 10, a 
scouting party of twenty-five men from Waldo's 
regiment was sent out to find and drive off these 
scouting Party marauders. While they were engaged 
in plundering some dwelling-houses at 
one of the out-settlements, they themselves were 
unexpectedly attacked by a superior force, and all 
but three killed, the Indians murdering the pn's- 



98 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

oners in cold blood. On the following day our 
men returned to the scene of disaster, and after 
burying their fallen comrades, they burned the 
place to the ground. 

With these events the campaign settled down 
into the slow and laborious operations of a regular 
siege ; and here began those inevitable bickerings 
between the chiefs of the land and naval forces, 
which, in a man of different temper than Pepper- 
ell was, might have led to serious results. 

In Shirley, his lawful captain-general, Pepperell 
had always a superior whose orders he felt bound 
to obey to the best of his ability, cost what it 
might. Fortunately, Shirley's power of annoy- 
ance was limited by distance, though he kept up 
an animated fire of suggestions. In 

Disagree- °° 

ments. Warren, however, the brusque and im- 

pulsive sailor, Pepperell now found a tutor and 
a critic, whose irritation at the subordinate part 
he was playing showed itself in unreasonable 
demands upon his slow but sure coadjutor, and 
now and then even in a hardly concealed sneer. 
As time wore on, Warren grew more and more 
restive and importunate, while Pepperell continued 



THE SIEGE 99 

patient, calm, and methodical to the last. Warren 
would call his fleet-captains together, hold a coun- 
cil, discuss the situation from his point of view, 
and send off to Pepperell the result of their delib- 
erations, with the final exhortation attached, " For 
God's sake let ?ts do something!" — that "some- 
thing" being that Pepperell should practically fin- 
ish the siege without him, as we have already 
shown. Warren was a man standing at a door 
to keep out intruders, while the two actual adver- 
saries were fighting it out inside. He might occa- 
sionally halloo to them to be quick about it, but he 
was hardly in the fight himself. 

Pepperell would then get his council together in 
his turn, and, smarting under the sense of injustice, 
would submit the lecture that Warren had read 
him, with its thinly veiled irony, and unconcealed 
hauteur, to which the imputation of ignorance was 
not lacking. The situation would then be again 
discussed in all its bearings, from the army's stand- 
point, which might be stated as follows : The fort- 
ress cannot be stormed until we have made a 
practicable breach in the walls. We must finish our 
batteries before this can be clone. Or let the com- 



100 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

modore bring in his ships and assist in silencing 
the enemy's fire. The army is losing strength 
every- day by sickness, while the fleet is gaining 
by the arrival of fresh ships. We cannot, if we 
would, pull the commodore's chestnuts out of the 
fire and our own too. v 

1 Major Seth Pomeroy of Northampton, Mass., was lieutenant- 
colonel of Williams's regiment in the battle of Lake George, 1755, succeed- 
ing to the command after Williams's death. At the beginning of the 
Revolution he fought as a volunteer at Bunker Hill. 

a Reference should be made to the plan at page 91. It will greatly 
simplify the siege operations to the reader if he will keep in mind the fact 
that the land attack was wholly confined within the points designated by 
A and B on this plan, or between the Dauphin and King's bastions. For 
our purpose, it is only necessary to add that the harbor front was defended 
by a strong wall of masonry, joining the Water Battery, G, with the Dau- 
phin Bastion, A. In this wall were five gates, leading to the water-side. 
It was the point at which the city would be exposed to assault from ship- 
ping or their boats. 

3 The Island Battery could not materially hinder the progress of 
the siege, and must have fallen with the city. The Circular Battery could 
not fire upon the besiegers at all, as it bore upon the harbor, but Warren 
insisted that he could not go in until these two works were silenced. If 
the time spent in doing this had been wholly employed in battering down 
the West Gate and its approaches, the city might have been taken with- 
out the fleet, leaving out of view, of course, the supposition of a repulse to 
the storming party. It is a strong assertion to say that the city could 
not have been taken without the fleet, because no trial was made. 

4 The Attack upon Annapolis having failed, these troops tried to 
get back to Louisburg, but were unable to do so. With their assistance 
Duchambon thinks he could have held out. 



THE SIEGE CONTINUED IOI 



IX 



THE SIEGE CONTINUED 



The routine of camp life is not without interest 
as tending to show what was the temper of the 
men under circumstances of unusual trial and 
hardship. They were housed in tents, most of 
which proved rotten and unserviceable, or in 
booths, which they built for themselves out of 
poles and green boughs cut in the neighboring- 
woods. The relief parties, told off each 

Camp Routine. 

day for work in the trenches, were 
marched to their stations after dark, as the ene- 
my's fire swept the ground over which they must 
pass. For a like reason, the fatigue parties could 
only bring up the daily supplies of provisions and 
ammunition to the trenches from Gabarus Bay, 
after darkness had set in. By great good-fortune, 
the weather continued dry and pleasant ; other- 
wise the bad housing and severe toil must have 



102 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

told on the health of the army even more severely 
than it did, while work in the trenches would 
have been suspended during the intervals of wet 
weather. 

A force like this, composed of men who were 
the equals of their officers at home, not bound 
together by habits of passive obedience formed 
under the severe penalties of martial law, could 
not be expected to observe the exact discipline of 
regular soldiers. It was not attempted to enforce 
it. Not one case of punishment for infraction of 
orders is reported during the siege. But officers 
and men had in them the making of far better sol- 
diers than the ordinary rank and file of armies. 
There were men in the ranks who rose to be 
colonels and brigadiers in the revolutionary con- 
test. 1 The hardest duty was performed without 
«= • •* f*w grumbling ; the most dangerous service 

Spirit of the fc> fc> > e> 

Army. found plenty of volunteers ; and Pep- 

perell himself has borne witness that nothing 
pleased the men better than to be ordered off on 
some scouting expedition that promised to bring 
on a brush with the enemy. 

This spirit is plainly manifest in the letters 



THE SIEGE CONTINUED 103 

which have been preserved. In one of them 
Major Pomeroy tells his wife that "it looks as if 
our campaign would last long ; but I am willing 
to stay till God's time comes to deliver the city 
into our hands." The reply is worthy of a woman 
of Sparta : " Suffer no anxious thoughts to rest in 
your mind about me. The whole town is much 
engaged with concern for the expedition, how 
Providence will order the affair, for which religious 
meetings every week are maintained. I leave you 
in the hand of God." 

There is not a despatch or a letter of Pepperell's 
extant, in which this dependence upon the Over- 
ruling Hand is not acknowledged. The barbaric 
utterance that Providence is always on the side of 
the strongest battalions would have shocked the 
men of Louisburg as deeply as it would the men 
of Preston, Edgehill, and Marston Moor. The 
conviction that their cause was a righteous one, 
and must therefore prevail, was a power still active 
among Puritan soldiers : nor did they fail to give 
the honor and praise of achieved victory to Him 
whom they so steadfastly owned as the Leader of 
Armies and the God of Battles. 



104 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

There were not wanting incidents which the 
soldiers treasured up as direct manifestations of 
Divine favor. Moses Coffin, of Newbury, who 
officiated in the double capacity of chaplain and 
drummer, and who had been nicknamed in conse- 
quence the "drum ecclesiastic," carried a small 
pocket-Bible about with him wherever he went. 
On returning to camp, after an engagement with 
the enemy, he found that a bullet had passed 
nearly through the sacred book, thus, undoubtedly, 
saving his life. 

The relaxation from discipline has been more or 
less commented upon by several writers, as if it 
implied a grave delinquency in the head of the 
army. We are of the opinion, however, that it 
was the safety-valve of this army, under the 
extraordinary pressure laid upon it. So while we 
may smile at the comparison made by Douglass, 
who says that the siege resembled a " Cambridge 
Commencement," or at the antics described by 
Frolics in Belknap, 2 we need not feel ourselves 
camp. bound to accept their conclusions. This 

author says : " Those who were on the spot, have 
frequently in my hearing laughed at the recital 



THE SIEGE CONTINUED 105 

of their own irregularities, and expressed their 
admiration when they reflected on the almost 
miraculous preservation of the army from destruc- 
tion. They indeed presented a formidable front 
to the enemy, but the rear was a scene of confu- 
sion and frolic. While some were on duty at the 
trenches, others were racing, wrestling, pitching 
quoits, firing at marks or birds, or running after 
shot from the enemy's guns for which they 
received a bounty." 

In his unscientific way, Pepperell was daily 
tightening his grasp upon Louisburg. Gridley, 3 
who acted in the capacity of chief engineer, had 
picked up from books all the knowledge he 
our Fascine possessed, but he soon showed a natural 
Batteries. aptitude for that branch of the service. 
Dwight, the chief of artillery, is not known ever 
to have pointed a shotted gun in his life. Instead 
of gradual approaches, of zigzags and epaule- 
ments, the ground was simply staked out where 
the batteries were to be placed. After dark the 
working parties started for the spot, carrying 
bundles of fascines on their backs, laid them on 
the lines, and then began digging the trenches 



106 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

and throwing up the embankment by the light of 
their lanterns. All the batteries at Louisburg 
were constructed in this simple fashion. The 
work of making the platforms, getting up the 
cannon, and mounting them, was attended with 
far greater labor and risk. 

In this manner a fascine battery covered by a 
trench in front, on which the provincials had been 
working like beavers for two days and nights, was 
raised within two hundred and fifty yards of the 
West Gate, against which it began sending its shot 
on the 1 8th. This was by much the 

The Advanced 

Battery opens most dangerous effort that the besiegers 

Fire May 18. 

had yet made, and the enemy at once 
trained every gun upon it that would bear, in the 
hope of either demolishing or silencing the work. 
It was so near that the men in the trenches, and 
those on the walls, kept up a continual fire of mus- 
ketry at each other, interspersed with sallies of 
wit, whenever there was a lull in the firing. The 
French gunners, who were kept well supplied with 
wine, would drink to the besiegers, and invite 
them over to breakfast or to take a glass of wine. 
In two days the fire of our guns had beaten 



THE SIEGE CONTINUED IO9 

down the drawbridges, part of the West Gate, 
and some of the adjoining wall. Pepperell com- 
plains at this time of his want of good gunners, 
also of a sufficient supply of powder to make good 
the daily consumption, of which he had no previous 
cannon conception, but is cheered by finding 

discovered. thirty cannon sunk at low-water mark 
on the opposite side of the harbor, which he 
designed mounting at the lighthouse forthwith, 
for attacking the Island Battery. Gorham's 
regiment was posted therewith this object. Thus 
again were the enemy furnishing means for their 
own destruction. Foreseeing that this fortifica- 
tion would shut the port to ships coming to his 
relief, Duchambon sent a hundred men across 
the harbor to drive off the provincials. A sharp 
fight ensued, in which the enemy were defeated. 

By this time another fascine battery situated by 

the shore, at a point nine hundred yards from the 

walls, began raking the Circular Battery 

Titcomb's 

Battery at of the enemy, in conjunction with the 

Work. 

direct fire from our Advanced Battery. 
It was called Titcomb's, from the officer in charge, 
Major Moses Titcomb of Hale's regiment. These 



IIO THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

two fortifications were now knocking to pieces 
the northwest corner of the enemy's ponderous 
works, known as the Dauphin Bastion. We were 
now playing on Louisburg from three batteries 
on the shore of the harbor, three in the rear of 
these, and had another in process of construction 
at the lighthouse, all of which, except the last, 
had been completed under fire within twenty clays, 
without recourse to any scientific rules whatever. 

In spite of Warren's watchfulness one vessel 
had slipped through his squadron into Louisburg 
unperceived, bringing supplies to the besieged, 
capture of the An event now took place which, to use 
vigilant. Pepperell's words, " produced a burst of 
joy in the army, and animated the men with fresh 
courage to persevere." The annual supply ship 
from France, for which our fleet had been con- 
stantly on the lookout, had run close in with the 
harbor in a thick fog, undiscovered by our vessels, 
and wholly unsuspicious of danger herself. When 
the fog lifted she was seen and engaged by the 
Mermaid, a forty-gun frigate, until the rest of the 
squadron could come to her aid, when, after a 
spirited combat, the French ship was forced to 



THE SIEGE CONTINUED III 

strike her colors. The prize proved to be the 
Vigilant, a new sixty-gun ship, loaded with stores 
and munitions for Louisburg. She Was soon put 
in fighting trim again, and manned by drafts made 
from the army and transports. 

By the 24th, two more heavy ships, which the 
ministry had sent out immediately upon receiving 
Shirley's advices that the expedition had been 
decided upon, 4 now joined Warren, who at length 
felt himself emboldened to ask Pepperell's co-op- 
eration in the following plan of attack. It was 
proposed to distribute sixteen hundred men, to be 
taken from the army, among the ships of war, all 
of which should then go into the harbor and 
attack the enemy's batteries vigorously. Under 
cover of this fire, the soldiers, with the 

Warren pro- 
poses to marines from the ships, were to land 

attack. 

and assault the city. Pepperell himself 
was to have no share in this business, except as a 
looker-on, but was to put his troops under the 
command of an officer of marines who should 
take his orders from Warren only. 

This implied censure to the conduct of the 
army and its chief, followed up the next day by 



112 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

the tart question of " Pray how came the Island 
Battery not to be attacked?" seems to have 
goaded Pepperell into giving the order for a night 
attack upon that strong post. Indeed, Pepperell's 
perplexities were growing every hour. On the 
day he received Warren's cool proposition to take 
the control of the army out of his hands, he had 
been obliged to send off a flying column in pursuit 
of a force which his scouts had reported *was at 
Mira Bay, fifteen miles from his camp. In fact, 
the forces which Duchambon had recalled from 
Annapolis were watching their chance either to 
make a dash into Louisburg, or throw themselves 
upon the besiegers' trenches unawares. 

Notwithstanding the hazard, it was determined 

to storm the Island Battery. For this purpose, 

four hundred volunteers embarked in whale-boats 

on the night of the 27th, and rowed cautiously 

round the outer shore of the harbor 

Island Bat- . 

tery stormed toward the back of the island, in the ex- 
pectation of finding that side unguarded. 
They were, however, discovered by the sentinels 
in season to thwart the plan of surprise. The 
garrison was alarmed. Still the brave provincials 



THE SIEGE CONTINUED 113 

would not turn back. Cannon and musketry were 
turned on them from the island and city. Through 
this storm of shot, by which many of the boats 
were sunk before they could reach the shore, only 
about half the attacking force passed unscathed. 
In scrambling up the rocks through a drenching 
surf, most of their muskets were wet with salt 
water, and rendered useless. Not yet dismayed, 
the assailants fought their numerous foes hand to 
hand for nearly an hour. Captain Brooks, their 

Gallantry of leadei "' WaS CUt d OWll in the Viclcc. 

William One William Tufts, a brave lad of onlv 

Tufts, Jr. . J 

nineteen, got into the battery, climbed 
the flagstaff, tore down the French colors, and 
fastened his own red coat to the staff, under a 
shower of balls, many of which went through his 
clothes without harming him. Sixty men were 
slain before the rest would surrender, but these 
were the flower of the army, whose loss saddened 
the whole camp, when the enemy's exulting cheers 
told the story of the disaster, at break of day. 
About a hundred and eighty-nine men were either 
drowned, killed, or taken in this desperate 
encounter. It was an exploit worthy of the men, 



114 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

but there was not one chance in 'ten of its being 
successful. For once Pepperell had allowed 
feeling to get the better of judgment by taking 
that chance. 

Pepperell could now say to Warren that his 
proposal would not be agreed to. His effective 
force had been reduced by sickness to twenty-one 
hundred men, six hundred of whom were at that 
moment absent from camp. As a compliance with 
Warren's requisition for sixteen hundred men 
would be equivalent to exposing everything to the 
uncertain chances of a single bold dash, Pepperell's 
council very wisely concluded that it was far 
better to hold fast what had been gained, than to 
risk all that was hoped for. They offered to lend 
the commodore five hundred soldiers, and six 
hundred sailors, if he would go and assault the 
Island Battery, in his turn, but Warren's only 
reply was to urge the completion of the Light- 
house Battery for that work. 

The siege had now continued thirty days with- 
out decisive results. So far Duchambon had 
showed no sign of yielding, and Pepperell found 
it difficult to get information as to the state of the 



THE SIEGE CONTINUED 115 

garrison. An expedient was therefore hit upon 
which was calculated to test both the temper and 
condition of the besieged thoroughly : for although 
the capture of the Vigilant had been witnessed 
from the walls of Louisburg, it had not produced 
the impression that the besiegers had expected. 
This was the key to what now took place. 

Maisonforte, captain of the Vigilant, was still 

a prisoner on board the fleet. He was given to 

understand that the provincials were 

Effect of 

stratagem greatly exasperated over the cruel treat- 
tried. 

ment of some prisoners, who had been 

murdered after they were taken, and he was asked 

to write to Duchambon informing him just how 

the French prisoners were treated, to the end that 

such barbarities as had been complained of might 

cease, and retaliation be avoided. 

Maisonforte readily fell into the trap laid for 

him. He unhesitatingly wrote the letter as 

requested, it was sent to Duchambon by a flag, 

and was delivered by an officer who understood 

French, in order to observe its effect. The letter 

thus conveyed to Duchambon the disagreeable 

news of the Vigilant's capture, of which he had 



Il6 TPIE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

been ignorant, and it made a visible impression. 
He now knew that his determination to hold out 
in view of the expected succors from France, was 
of no further avail. This correspondence took 
place on the 7th. 

By the arrival of ships destined for the New- 
foundland station, the fleet had been increased to 
eleven ships carrying five hundred and forty guns. 
On the 9th two deserters came into our lines, who 
said that the garrison could not hold out much 
longer unless relieved. On the nth, which was 
the anniversary of the accession of George II., a 
general bombardment took place, in 

Lighthouse 

Battery which the new Lighthouse Battery 

joined, for the first time. The effect 
of its fire upon the Island Battery was so marked, 
that Warren now declared himself ready to join in 
a general attack, whenever the wind should be fair 
for it. For this attempt Pepperell pushed forward 
his own preparations most vigorously. Boats were 
got ready to land troops at different parts of the 
town. The Circular Battery was about silenced. 
All the 13th, 14th, and 15th a furious bombard- 
ment was kept up. Our marksmen swept the 



THE SIEGE CONTINUED WJ 

streets of the doomed city, with musketry, from 
the advanced trenches, so that no one could show 
his head in any part of it without being instantly 
riddled with balls. The artillerists at the Island 
Battery were driven from their posts, some even 
i , a o « taking: refuse from our shells by running 

Island Battery fc> - o Jo 

silenced. mtQ tnQ gea Q m - Doa t s now passed ill 

and out of the harbor freely, with supplies, without 
molestation. It was evident that the fall of this 
much dreaded bulwark had brought the siege 
practically to a close. 

On the 14th the whole fleet came to an anchor 
off the harbor in line of battle. It made a 
splendid and imposing array. At the same time 
the troops were mustered under arms, and 
exhorted to do their full duty when the order 
should be given them to advance upon the enemy's 
works. In the midst of these final preparations 
for a combined and decisive assault, an ominous 
silence brooded over the doomed city. It was 
clear to all that the crisis was at hand. 

Duchambon felt that he had now done all that a 
brave and resolute captain could for the defence 
of the fortress. He saw an overwhelming force 



Il8 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

about to throw itself with irresistible power upon 
his dismantled walls, in every assailable part at 
once. His every hope of help from without had 
failed him. Food for his men and powder for his 
guns were nearly exhausted. He was now con- 
fronted with the soldier's last dread alternative of 
meeting an assault sword in hand, with but faint 
prospect of success, or of lowering the flag he 
had so gallantly defended. The wretched inhabit- 
ants, who had endured every privation cheerfully, 
so long as there was hope, earnestly entreated him 
to spare them the horrors of storm and pillage. 
On the 15th, in the afternoon, while the two 
chiefs of the expedition were in consultation 
together, Duchambon sent a flag to Pepperell 
proposing a suspension of hostilities until terms 
of capitulation should be agreed upon. This was 
at once granted until eight o'clock of the following 
morning. Duchambon's proposals were then 
submitted and rejected as inadmissible, but 
The Fortress counter proposals were sent him, to 
surrenders. wn ich, on the same day, he gave his 
assent, by sending hostages to both Pepperell and 
Warren, saving only that the garrison should be 



THE SIEGE CONTINUED I 19 

allowed to march out with the honors of war. 
For reasons to be looked for, no doubt, in his pride 
as a professional soldier, and in his reluctance to 
treat with any other, he addressed separate notes 
to the land and naval commanders. As neither 
felt disposed to stand upon a point of mere 
punctilio, Duchambon's request was immediately 
acceded to. A striking difference, however, is to 
be observed between Pepperell's and Warren's 
replies to the French commander. In his own 
Pepperell generously, and honorably, makes the 
full ratification of this condition subject to 
Warren's approval. In the commodore's there is 
not one word found concerning the general of the 
land forces, or of his approbation or disapprobation, 
any more than if he had never existed ; but in 
Warren's note the extraordinary condition is 
annexed " that the keys of the town be delivered 
to such officers and troops as I shall appoint to 
receive them, and that all the cannon, warlike and 
other stores in the town, be also delivered up to 
the said officers." 

On the 17th Warren took formal possession of 
the Island Battery, and shortly after went into the 



120 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

city himself to confer with the governor. In the 
meantime, conceiving it to be his right to receive 
the surrender, Pepperell had informed the governor 
of his intention to put a detachment of his own 
troops in occupation of the city defences that 
same afternoon. This communication was imme- 
diately shown to Warren, who at once addressed 
Pepperell, in evident irritation, upon the " irregu- 
larity " of his proceeding's, until the articles of 
surrender should have been formally signed and 
sealed. The fact that he had just proposed 
to receive the surrender of the fortress himself 
was not even referred to, nor does it appear that 
Pepperell ever knew of it. One cannot overlook, 
therefore, the presence of some unworthy manoeu- 
vring, seconded by Duchambon's professional 
vanity, to claim and obtain a share of the honor 
of this glorious achievement, not only unwarranted 
by the part the navy had taken in it, since it had 
never fired a shot into Louisburg, or lost a man 
by its fire : but calculated to mislead public opinion 
in England. 

An unpublished letter of General Dwight, 
written three days after the entry of the provincial 



&*s£A 







THE SIEGE CONTINUED 123 

troops, relates the closing scenes of this truly- 
memorable contest. It runs as follows : — 

"We entered the city on Monday last (17th) 
about five o'clock p.m., with colors flying, drums, 
hautboys, violins, trumpets, etc. Gentlemen and 
ladies caressing (the French inhabitants) as well 
they might, for a New England dog would have 
died in the holes we drove them to — I mean the 
casemates where they dwelt during the siege. 

"This fortress is so valuable, as well as large 
and extensive, that we may say the one half has 
not been conceived. . . . Sometimes I am ready 
to say a thousand men in a thousand years could 
not effect it. Words cannot convey the idea of 
it. . . . One half of ye warlike stores for such a 
siege were not laid in ; however, the Vigilant 
(French supply ship) being taken and Commodore 
Warren's having some supply of stores from New 
England was very happy, and so it is that his 
readiness has been more than equal to his 
ability." 

Governor Duchambon puts his whole force at 
thirteen hundred men at the beginning of the 
siege, and at eleven hundred at its close. About 



124 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

two thousand men were, however, included in the 
capitulation, of which number six hundred and 
fifty were veteran troops. The besiegers' shot had 
wrought destruction in the city. There was not 
a building left unharmed or even habitable, by the 
fifteen thousand shot and shells that Pepperell's 
batteries had thrown into it. 

When Pepperell saw the inside of Louisburg 
he probably realized for the first time the magni- 
tude of the task he had undertaken. On looking 
around him, he said, with the expeditionary motto 
in mind no doubt, " The Almighty, of a truth, has 
been with us." 

As the expedition began, so it now ended, with 
a prayer, which has come down to us as a part of 
its history. Pepperell celebrated his entry into 
Louisburg by giving a dinner to his officers. 
When they were seated at table, the general 
called upon his old friend and neighbor, the Rev. 
Mr. Moody of York, to ask the Divine blessing. 
As the parson's prayers were proverbial for 
their length, the countenances of the guests fell 
when he arose from his chair, but to every- 
body's surprise the venerable chaplain made his 



THE SIEGE CONTINUED 125 

model and pithy appeal to the throne of grace in 
these words : 

" Good Lord ! we have so many things to thank 
thee for, that time will be infinitely too short to do 
it : we must therefore leave it for the work of 
eternity." 

1 General John Nixon is one of those referred to. 

2 Douglass (Summary), Belknap ("History of New Hampshire") 
and Hutchinson ("History of Massachusetts Bay") have accounts of 
the Louisburg expedition. Douglass and Hutchinson wrote contempo- 
raneously, and were well informed, the latter especially, upon all points 
relating to the inception and organization. Of their military criticism it 
is needless to speak. There is a host of authorities, both French and 
English, most of which are collected in Vol. V. " Narrative and Critical 
History of America." 

3 Richard Gridley subsequently laid out the works at Bunker 
Hill and Dorchester Heights, in much the same manner. 

4 Shirley's second messenger, Captain Loring, on presenting his 
despatches, was allowed but twelve hours in London, being then ordered 
on board the Princess Mary, one of the ships referred to. 



126 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 



X 

AFTERTHOUGHTS 

And now comes the strangest part of the story. 
We get quite accustomed to thinking of the 
American colonies as the football of European 
diplomacy, our reading of history has fully pre- 
pared us for that : but we are not prepared to find 
events in the New World actually shaping the 
course of those in the Old. In a word, England 
lost the battle in Europe, but won it in America. 
France was confounded at seeing the key to 
Canada in the hands of the enemy she had just 
beaten. England and France were like two 
duellists who have had a scuffle, in the course of 
which they have exchanged weapons. Instead of 
dictating terms, France had to compromise mat- 
ters. For the sake of preserving her colonial 
possessions, she now had to give up her dear- 
bought conquests on the continent of Europe. 
Hostilities were suspended. All the belligerents 



AFTERTHOUGHTS 12 1 / 

agreed to restore what they had taken from each 
other, and cry quits ; but it is plain that France 
would never have consented to such a settlement 
at a time when her adversaries were so badly 
crippled, when all England \.as in a ferment, and 
she hurrying back her troops from Holland in 
order to put down rebellion at home, thus leaving 
the coalition of which she was the head to stand 
or fall without her. France would not have 
stayed her victorious march, we think, under such 
circumstances as these, unless the nation's atten- 
tion had been forcibly recalled to the gravity of 
the situation in America. 

In some respects this episode of history recalls 
the story of the mailed giant, armed to the teeth, 
and of the stripling with his sling. 

As all the conquests of this war were restored 
by the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, Cape Breton 
went to France again. 

Thus had New England made herself felt across 
the Atlantic by an exhibition of power, as 
unlooked-for as it was suggestive to thoughtful 
men. To some it was merely like that put forth 
by the infant Hercules, in his cradle. But to 



128 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

England, the unnatural mother, it was a notice 
that the child she had neglected was coming to 
manhood, ere long to claim a voice in the disposal 
of its own affairs. 

To New England herself the consequences of 
her great exploit were very marked. The martial 
spirit was revived. In the trenches of Louisburg 
was the training-school for the future captains of 
the republic. Louisburg became a watchword and 
a tradition to a people intensely proud of their 
traditions. Not only had they made themselves 
felt across the ocean, but they now first awoke to 
a better knowledge of their own resources, their 
own capabilities, their own place in the empire, 
and here began the growth of that independent 
spirit which, but for the prompt seizure of a 
golden opportunity, might have lain dormant for 
years. Probably it would be too much to say that 
the taking of Louisburg opened the eyes of 
discerning men to the possibility of a great 
empire in the West ; yet, if we are to look about 
us for underlying causes, we know not where else 
to find a single event so likely to give birth to 
speculative discussion, or a new and enlarged 



AFTERTHOUGHTS 1 29 

direction in the treatment of public concerns. 
What had been done would always be pointed to 
as evidence of what might be done again. So we 
have considered the taking of Louisburg, in so 
far as the colonies were concerned, as the event 
of its epoch. 1 

Nor would these discussions be any the less 
likely to arise, or to grow any the less threatening 
to the future of crown and colony, when it became 
known that to balance her accounts with other 
powers England had handed over Cape Breton to 
France again, thus putting in her hand the very 
weapon that New England had just wrested from 
her, as the pledge to her own security. The work 
was all undone with a stroke of the pen. The 
colonies were still to be the football of European 
politics. 

Nobody in the colonies supposed this would be 
the reward of their sacrifices — that they should 
be deliberately sold by the home government, or 
that France, after being once disarmed, would be 
quietly told to go on strengthening her American 
Gibraltar as much as she liked. Yet this was 
what really happened, notwithstanding the Duke 



I30 THE TAKING OF LOUISBURG 

of Newcastle's bombastic declaration that "if 
France was master of Portsmouth, he would hang 
the man who should give up Cape Breton in 
exchange for it." 

King George, who was in Hanover when he 
heard of the capture of Louisburg, sent word to 
Pepperell that he would be made a baronet, thus 
distinguishing him as the proper chief of the 
expedition. This distinction, which really made 
Pepperell the first colonist of his time, was nobly 
won and worthily worn. After four years of 
importunity the colonies succeeded in getting 
their actual expenses reimbursed to them, which 
was certainly no more than their dues, considering 
that they had been fighting the battles of the 
mother country. 2 

Warren was made an admiral. The navy came 
in for a large amount of prize money, obtained 
from ships that were decoyed into Louisburg 
after it fell, to the exclusion of the army. 3 This 
disposition of the spoils was highly resented by 
the army, who very justly alleged that, while the 
success of the army without the fleet might be 
open to debate, there could be no question what- 



AFTERTHOUGHTS. I 3 I 

ever of the fleet's inability to take Louisburg 
without the army. 

1 The surrender caused great rejoicing in the colonies, as was 
natural it should, with all except those who had always predicted its 
failure. For some reason the news did not reach Boston until July 2, in 
the night. At daybreak the inhabitants were aroused from their slumbers 
by-the thunder of cannon. The whole day was given up to rejoicings. 
A public thanksgiving was observed on the iSth. The news reached 
London on the 20th. The Tower guns were fired, and at night London 
was illuminated. Similar demonstrations occurred in all the cities and 
large towns of the kingdom. At Versailles the news caused deep gloom. 
De Luynes speaks of it thus in his Memoirs: " People have been willing 
to doubt about this affair of Louisburg, but unhappily it is only too cer- 
tain. These misfortunes have given rise to altercations among ministers. 
It is urged that M. Maurepas is at fault in having allowed Louisburg to 
fall for want of munitions. The friends of M. Maurepas contend that he 
did all that was possible, but could not obtain the necessary funds from 
the Treasury." The government got ready two fleets to retake Louisburg. 
One was scattered or sunk by storms in 1746, and one was destroyed by 
Lord Anson, in 1747, off Cape Finisterre. 

2 The amount was £183,649 to Massachusetts, £16,355 to New 
Hampshire, .£28,863 to Connecticut, and .£6,332 to Rhode Island. Quite 
a large portion was paid in copper coins. 

3 Among others the navy took a Spanish Indiaman, having J?2,ooo,- 
000, besides gold and silver ingots to a large value, stowed under her cargo 
of cocoa. The estimated value of all the prizes was nearly a million 
sterling, of which enormous sum only one colonial vessel got a share. 



THE END 



INDEX 



Acadia (Nova Scotia), Louisburg 
designed to protect, 29. 

Acadians, refuse to emigrate, 34 ; 
and refuse to become British 
subjects, 35 ; why called Neutrals, 
36 ; desire to remove elsewhere, 

3,6- 

Aix-la-Chapelle, Peace of, 127. 

Annapolis, N. S., attempted capt- 
ure of, 43 ; attack on, frustrated, 
note 100. 

Auchmuty, Robert, proposes the 
taking of Louisburg, note 58. 

Boston, defenceless condition of, 
1 1. 

Bradstreet, Colonel John, at Louis- 
burg, 70. 

Brooks, Captain, killed at Louis- 
burg, 113. 

Canada, the key to, r2 ; its politi- 
cal and economic weaknesses, 24 
et seq. ; compared with the Eng- 
lish colonies, 25 ; the fur monop- 
oly, 26 ; scheme for building up 
the colony, 28. 

Canso, seized from Louisburg, 43, 
note 45 ; prisoners taken there 
prove useful, 49 ; army rendezvous 
at, 69 ; environs of, 76 ; works 
thrown up at, yj. 

Cape Breton Island, face of the 
country, 16; mountains of, 17; 
Gabarus Bay, 23 ; first sugges- 
tions of its importance to 
Canada, 28 ; natural products of, 
29; advantageous situation as a 



port of delivery and supply, 29 ; 
left to Canada by stupid diplo- 
macy, 30 ; its chief harbors, 31 ; 
the Bras d'Or, 31 ; called lie 
Royale, 32 ; plan for getting 
colonists, 33, 34 ; strategic points 
on the straits, 76 ; ice blockade 
of, 77 ; restored to France, 127. 

Cape Breton Coast, approach to, 
14 ; blockaded by ice, tj. 

Circular battery of Louisburg, its 
design, 93; silenced, 116. 

Coffin, Moses, of Newbury, Mass., 
anecdote of, 104. 

Connecticut in Louisburg expedi- 
tion, 57; her forces join Pepper- 
ell, 7 S. 

Dauphin Bastion, of Louisburg, 
93 ; destructive fire upon, no. 

De Costebello, at Louisburg, 33. 

De Saxe, Marshal, defeats the 
English, 41. 

Duchambon, commander of Louis- 
burg, S4 ; recalls a detachment, 
95 ; refuses to surrender, 96 ; 
changes his mind, 117; and opens 
a treaty, 1 18. 

Dwight, Joseph, at Louisburg, 66 
and note 71. 

English Harbor (Louisburg), 31. 

Expeditionary Army, its composi- 
tion, 66 ; and equipment, 67, 68 ; 
favoring conditions, 68 ; sets sail 
for Louisburg, 69 ; at Canso, 69 ; 
council of war, 75 ; sails for 
Louisburg, 80 ; lands at Gabarus 



134 



INDEX 



Bay, 84 ; not backed up by the 
navy, 90; transportation of artil- 
lery to the front, 94 ; it tells on 
the men, 95 ; the camp and camp 
life, 101 et seq. 

Flat Point Cove, our army 

camps at, 85. 
Fontenoy, English defeated at, 41. 
Franklin, Benjamin, has no faith in 

Louisburg expedition, 57. 

Gabajius Bay, the back door to 
Louisburg, 23 ; Pepperell lands 
at, So, 81. 

Gibson, James, volunteers for Louis- 
burg, 03, note 70. 

Green Hill, Louisburg shelled from, 

.95- 
Gridley, Richard, engineer at Louis- 
burg, 66; an apt scholar, 105, 
note 125. 

Hale, Robert, at Louisburg, note 

7 1 - 

Hodges, Joseph, at Louisburg, note 

72. 
Hutchinson, Thomas, gives casting 
vote for attacking Louisburg, 55. 

Island Battery, situation of, 15; 
its value to the besieged, 93 and 
note 100 ; disastrous attack upon, 
112, 113; its fire silenced, 116; 
in our hands, 119. 

He Royale, see Cape Breton, 32. 

Isle Madame, or Arichat, 76. 

Lighthouse Point, 14; is seized 
and fortified, 109. 

Louisburg, the approach to, 14 ; the 
harbor, 15; old city, 15; old 
fortifications perambulated, 17; 
hills back of, 17; natural de- 
fences of, iS ; demolition of the 
works, 19; and present state of, 
19 ; Citadel, 20; natural obstacles 
to surmount, 21 ; bomb-proofs, 
21 ; impregnable from sea, 21 ; 
graveyard and its inmates, 22 ; 



Royal Battery, 23 ; reasons why 
the fortress was erected, 24 et 
seq. ; to be a great mart, 28 ; 
to help Acadia, 29 ; called 
English Harbor, 31 ; chosen 
for a fortress, 32; why called 
Louisburg, 32 ; operations be- 
gun, 33 ; prisoners shipped to, 
from France, 37 ; strength and 
cost of the fortress, 38 and note 
45 ; could be defended by women, 
39; its armament, 39; garrison 
sallies out upon Nova Scotia. 44 ; 
its fall the salvation of New Eng- 
land, 47 ; schemes for its capt- 
ure, 50 ; its garrison mutinies, 
51 ; forces being raised against it, 
56, 57; early suggestions for its 
conquest, note 58 ; is blockaded, 
jt, ; is invested, 89 ; its defences 
as related to the siege, 93 ; prog- 
ress of siege operations, 95 et 
seq. ; summoned to surrender, 96 ; 
breaching batteries, 106 ; progress 
of siege, 109; a relieving vessel 
gets in, no; capture of the 
Vigilant, no; stratagem tried, 
115 ; its success, 115 ; a general 
bombardment, 116; a suspension 
of arms, 118 ; the surrender, 123 ; 
the garrison, 123, 124; impor- 
tance to Great Britain as a politi- 
cal make-weight, 126 et seq. ; re- 
stored to France, 127; many- 
sided importance of the conquest 
to the colonies, 12S, 129 ; disgust 
in the colonies at its restoration, 
129 ; cost of the campaign, note 
131 ; rejoicings, note 131. 

Meserve, Lieutenant-Colonel, his 

services at Louisburg, 94. 
Micmacs of Cape Breton, 37. 
Mira River, settlements on, 16. 
Moody, Rev. Samuel, his pithy 

prayer, 124. 
Moore, Samuel, at Louisburg, 7iote 

72. 
Moulton, Jeremiah, at Louisburg, 

note 71 ; destroys St. Peter's, 96. 



INDEX 



135 



Newcastle, Duke of, anecdote of, 

44- 

New England alarmed by the crea- 
tion of Louisburg, 39 ; dreads the 
beginning of war, 42 : war is de- 
clared, 43 ; menace to her com- 
merce and fisheries, 46, 47 ; 
aroused to take Louisburg, 54, 
55 ; extraordinary war measures 
in, 56, 57; quality of expedition- 
ary army, 62, 63 ; enthusiasm in 
enlisting, 64 ; reimbursed for her 
expenses, note 131. 

Newfoundland, French removed 
from, 33. 

New Hampshire contingent, 69 ; 
note 72. 

New Jersey in Louisburg expedi- 
tion, 57. 

New York contributes to Louisburg 
expedition, 57. 

Nixon, John, note 125. 

Nova Scotia (Acadia) turned over to 
England, 30 ; invaded, 43 ; re- 
lieved, 95. 

Pennsylvania in Louisburg expe- 
dition, 57. 

Pepperell, William, chosen to com- 
mand, 60 ; his qualifications, 61, 
62 ; impetus given by him to the 
project, 63, 64; his regiment, 
note 70 ; hampered by instruc- 
tions, 75 ; finds Louisburg 
blocked up by ice, 77 ; hails 
Warren's arrival with joy, 7S ; 
confident of driving the enemy 
from Cape Breton, 79 ; finds 
Shirley's plan impracticable, 83 ; 
finds his task greater than he 
had supposed, 90; his advances 
against the city properly made, 
93 ; is goaded into attacking the 
Island Battery, 112; pushes for- 
ward preparations for a general 
assault. 116 ; grants an armistice, 
118; his conduct contrasted with 
Warren's, 119; made a baronet, 
130. 

Pitts, Ebenezer, at Louisburg, note 



Pomeroy, Major Seth, at Louis- 
burg, 89 ; his record, note 100. 

Quebec, as the bulwark of Canada, 
11. 

Raudots, father and son, their 
scheme for putting new life into 
Canada, 26 ; it proposes a great 
naval mart at Cape Breton, 28. 

Rhode Island in Louisburg expedi- 
tion, 56. 

Richmond, Sylvester, at Louisburg, 
note 71. 

Royal Battery, situation and impor- 
tance of, 23; taken, 86 ; attempt 
to retake it, 87 ; its importance to 
Americans, 88. 

Ryal, Captain, sent to England, 
41. 

St. Anne, described, 31. 

Saint Ovide, at Louisburg, 35. 

St. Peter's, destruction of, deter- 
mined on, 76 ; is effected, 96. 

Seacoast defences of Mexico, Cuba, 
etc., 9; of the English colonies, 
10, n ; of Canada, 1 1. 

Shirley, Gov. William, saves Annap- 
olis. 43 ; notifies ministry, 44 ; 
writes Commodore Warren, 44 ; 
grasps the situation, 48 ; his per- 
sonal traits, 48, 49 ; determines 
to take Louisburg, 50 ; applies to 
legislature, 52 ; meets defeat, 5^ ; 
arouses public sentiment, 54 ; 
carries his point, 55; sets to 
work, 56 ; hears from Warren, 
69 ; attempts to order plan of 
attack, 73, 74. 

Straits of Canso, 31. 

Touknay, invested, 41. 

Tufts, William, his bravery, 113. 

Tyng, Commodore Edward, com- 
mands colonial fleet, £7; note 
7 2 - 

Utrecht, hov the Peace of, affect; 
the colonies, 30. 



1 36 



INDEX 



Vaughan, William, who he was 

and what he did, 49, 50 ; note 58 ; 

volunteers for Louisburg, 63 ; 

leads a scouting party, 85 ; and 

takes Royal Battery, 86. 
Vigilant, French war-ship, taken, 

no. 

Waldo, Samuel, at Louisburg, 67 
and note 71 ; occupies Royal 
Battery, and fires first shot, 89. 

War of the Austrian Succession, its 
policy outlined, 40 ; produces war 
between England and France, 41 ; 



hostilities begin at Nova Scotia, 
44. 

Warren, Commodore Peter, orders 
sent to, 44 ; arrives at Canso 
and proceeds off Louisburg, 78 ; 
takes the Vigilant, no; is re-en- 
forced, in ; his plan for taking 
the city, in ; agrees to a general 
attack, 116 ; he ignores Pepperell, 
119; made an admiral, 130. 

Whitefield, Rev. George, 62 ; writes 
a motto for the flag, 65. 

Wolcott, Gen. Roger, 67 and note 
7'- 



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GOLDEN RULE STORIES By Mrs S. C. B. Samuels 
The Golden Rule Nettie's Trial 

The Shipwrecked Girl The Burning Prairie 

Under the Sea The Smuggler's Cave 

CELESTA'S LIBRARY for Boys and Girls 
Celesta A Thousand a Year 

Crooked and Straight Abel Grey 

The Crook Straightened May Coverley 

Mrs. Samuels has written many attractive books. The scenes and 
incidents she portrays are full of life, action, and interest, and decidedly 
wholesome and instructive. 
SALT-WATER DICK STORIES By May Mannering 
Climbing the Rope The Little Spaniard 

Billy Grimes's Favorite Salt-Water Dick 

Cruise of the Dashaway Little Maid of Oxbow 

Not all tales of the sea, as the title of the series would imply, but stories 
of many lands by a lady who has been a great traveller, and tells what she 
his ieen, in a captivating way. 
UPSIDE-DOWN STORIES By Rosa Abbott 
Jack of all Trades Upside Down 

Alexis the Runaway The Young Detective 

Tommv Hirkup The Pinks and Blues 

VACAT.O.M STORIES for Boys and Girls 6 vols 

Illustrated 
Worth not Wealth Karl Keigler or The Fortunes 

Country Life of a Foundling 

The Charm Walter Seyton 

Holiday"; at Chestnut Hill 

GREAT ROSY DIAMOND STORIES for Girls 

6 vols. Illustrated 
The Great Rosy Diamond Minnie or The Little Woman 

Daisy or The Fairy Spectacles The Angel Children 
Violet a Fairy Story Little Blossom's Reward 



'Id by nil bookspllers and sent by mail nnsinnid on cwp'of nf n»-'>« 

LEE AHD SHEPAHC Publisher? Boston 



SISWtoIty 

Three Books. Cloth, illustrated. Price for each book, 50 cents. Boards, 

30 cents net. By mail, 35 cents 

First Series 

STORIES OF AMERICAN HISTORY. By N. S. Podge 

As a reading-book for the younger classes in public and private schools 

(by many of which it has been adopted), it will be found of great value. 

.'Nobody knows better than the author how to make a good story out 

of th t fitness There is no better, purer, more interesting, or more in. 
structive book for boys.»-A^- York Hearth ami Home 

Second Series 
NOBLE DEEDS OF OUR FATHERS. As Told by Soldiers 
of the Revolution gathered around the Old Bell of Independence. 
Revised and adapted from Henry C. Watson 

of the patriotic women of that day, stories of adventure ^rding ^n 

—Norwich Bulletin 

Third Series 

THE BOSTON TEA PARTY and other Stories of 
the Revolution. Relating many Daring Deeds of the Old 
Heroes. By Henry C. Watson 

•■The tales are full of interesting material, ^™*Mj?A£?l 
<rrar>hic manner and eive many incidents of personal daring and aescrip. 
S of femoul'men and places Gene ral Putnam's ^^g** 
Concord, the patriotism of Mr. Borden, the tattle of ^f",^ £* 
battle of Oriskany, the mutiny at M^g^SK practical 
Francisco are among the subjects. Looks sucn as . i 
value and an undeniable charm History will never be M*uh so Jong ^s 
it is presented with so much brightness and coloi . -1 hilaUt ipma 

From David S. Keck, A.M., Sr.ft. of Berks County Schools. ^ 
I received a package containing "Stories of American H'^tory 
■< Rosto.fTeaPa.rtv" and " Noble Deeds of our Forefathers, and 
read" to sly thSe stories are all historical and the matter .is present d 
in such simple and pleasing style that it will arouse V*™£* feeling n 
the heart of every American and a ^ sa,„ m - ^-^ 

if much good. 

<_EE AND SHEPARD, Publishers, Boston 



E 



THE 



geographical 
* * * Readers 

In Four Fully Illustrated Volumes 



By CHAS. F. KING 

Master Dearborn Grammar School, Boston ; President National Summer School, 
Saratoga Springs ; Author of " Methods and Aids in Geography " 

First Book HOME AND SCHOOL 

240 pages Over 125 illustrations Price 50 cents ne* 
" Sight takes the lead as a channel of perception." — Spencer. 

True concepts of real geography can only be formed through travel or from 
pictures. Travelling is costly ; but an excellent and accurate substitute is found 
m the pictures produced by the photographic camera. The photographer has been 
round the world and made his report. We call upon him to aid us in telling 
others what he has seen. 

Supplementary reading is in great demand, but only books which combine the 
useful with the interesting are worthy of being introduced into the school-room. 

The four volumes of the Picturesque Readers now in course of preparation are 
not only intensely interesting, but they contain all the " Essentialsof Geography " 
in so compact and vivid a form that they can be read by a bright child of ten in a 
year as supplementary reading in school, or at home in a few weeks, thus meeting 
the great demand " for less time in geography." 

We call attention to the following 

POINTS OF SUPERIORITY 

1 Ample use of pictures — over ioo large and elegant pictures in Vol. I. 

600 illustrations in the series. 

2 All pictures made from photographs, photographic slides, French and 

English designs, or by the best American artists. 

3 Written in narrative style. « 

4 Language adapted to children's comprehension. 

5 Carefully prepared by personal narrative, wise selection and adaptation. 
S Equally well adapted for home reading and school purposes. 

1 Properly graded for the different classes in grammar schools. 

8 Containing a vast amount of information for old and young, for teacher 

and taught. 

9 A happy combination of the useful and interesting. 

10 From these readers can be easily taught Geography, Reading, Spelling, 

Dictation and Composition. 

1 1 All mere map explanations and descriptions carefully avoided. 

12 Costly in preparation, but cheap in price. 

13 These books can be used in place of, or in connection with, geographies. 

14 These fascinating geographical readers will take the place of the stupid sets 

of map questions and columns of statistics. 

LEE AND SHEPARD Publishers 10 Ml Street BOSTON 



JANE ANDREWS' BOOKS 

THE SEVEN LITTLE SISTERS WHO 
LIVE ON THE ROUND BALL THAT 
FLOATS IN THE AIR New Edition 
with an introduction by Mrs. Louisa Pur- 
sons Hopkins School Edition c'.'- ill 50 cts 

THE SE VENLITTLK SlSTEKSFltOV E 
THEIR SISTERHOOD OK EACH 
AND ALL School Edition cloth 50 cents 

TEN BOYS WHO LIVED ON THE 
ROAD JKOM LONG AGO TO NOW 
2 i Illustrations cloth 8 • cents 

THE STORIES MOTHER NATURE 
TOLD HER CHILDREN School Edi- 
tion 50 cents 

GEOGRAPHIC AL PLAYS For Young 
Folks at School and at Home Price each 
paper 15 cents 1. United States 2. Europe 
3. Asia 4. Africa and South America 5. 
Australia ami the Isles of the Sea 6. The 
Commerce of the World The above in one 
volume cloth 80 cents 



GRADED SUPPLEMENTARY HEAD- 
ING By Prof. Tweed late Supervisor of 
Huston Public Schools 12 Parts ready- Nos. 
1, 4, 7, and 10, 1st Year Primary. Nos. 2, 5, 
g, and 11, 2d Year Primary. Nos. 3, 6, it, 
and 12, 3d Year Primary. In paper covers 
4 cents each. By mail 5 cents The 4 parts 
for each year bound together in boarils 20 
cents each year 

YOUNG FOLKS' HISTORY OF THE 
UNITED STATES By Thomas AVent- 
worth Higginson With over 100 Illustra- 
tions $1.20 

YOUNG FOLKS' BOOK OF AMERI- 
CAN' EXPLOREKS By Thomas Went- 
worth Higginson Illustrated cloth $1.2u 

HANDBOOK OF ENGLISH H>ST«sRY 
Based on " Lectures on English History" 
By the late M. J. Guest and brought down 
to the year 18i>0 By F. H. Underwood 
LL.D. School edition boards 75 cents 

YOUNG PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF 
ENGLAND 

Y >UNG PEOPLE'S HISTORY OF IRE- 
LAND Illustrated By George Makepeace 
Towle School Edition boards 00 cts each 

STOI1V OF OUR COUNTRY By Mrs. L. 
I'.. Monroe Cloth 80 cents Boards GO cents 

TIE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER 
Bv.TohnRiiskin Cloth25cts Boards20cts 

BUHGOYNE'S INVASION OF 1777 
With an outline sketch of the American 
Invasion of Canada 1775-76 By Samuel 
Adams Drake Price 40 cents net. 

Manual of Bible Selections and Respon- 
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Schools By Mrs. S. B. Perry 60 cents net 



HEROES OF HISTORY By George 
Makepeace Towle Illustrated School Edi- 
tion boards 60 cents per volume 
V.vsco dk Gama : Pizarro: Magellan: 
Marco Polo: Kalegh : Drake 

PROF. LEWIS B. MONROE'S READ- 
INGS Boards 60 cents each 
Miscellaneous Readings : Humorous 
Readings: Young Folks' Readings; 
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EXCELLENT QUOTATIONS FOR 
HOME AND SCHOOL By Julia B. 
Hoitt Cloth net 75 cents 

CHAPTERS FROM JANE AUSTEN By 
Oscar Fay Adams Cloth net 75 cents 
The following books are furnished in boards 
Price 30 cents each 

Stories of Animals By Mrs. Sanborn 
Tenney 500 illustra ions G vols. Quad- 
rupeds: Biijds: Fishes and Reptiles: 
Beesandotiieu Insects : sea and River 
Shells: Seauuohins and Corals 

Youn? Folks' Book of Poetry Arranged 
by Prof. L. J. Campbell In three parts 
Paper 20 cents each Complete in one vol- 
ume cloth 80 cents 

Miss West's Class in Geography By 
Miss Sparhawk 

Child's Book of Health By Dr. Blaisdell 

Natural History Plays By Louisa P. 
Hopkins 

Robinson Crusoe Arranged for Schools by 
W. T. Adams 

Arabian Nights' Entertainments (Selec- 
tions^ Arranged for Schools by Dr. Eliot 

Stories from American History By N. S. 
Dodge 

Noble Deeds of our Fathers as told by 
Soldiers of the Revolution By H. C. Watson 

The Boston Tea-Party and "other Stories 
of the Revolution By H. C. Watson 

The Flower People By Mrs. Horace Mann 

Lessons on Manners By Miss Wiggin 

A Kiss for a Blow Bv Henry Clarke Wright 

The Nation in a Nutshell By George 
Makepeace Towle 

Short Studies of American Authors By 
T. W. Higginson 

The Columbian Speaker By L. J. Camp- 
bell and O. J. Root Jr. 

Every-Day Business Its Practical Details, 
arranged for Young People, by M. S. Emery 



R^adinifs from the Waverley Novels 

Edited by Albert F. Blaisdell A.M. Cljtli 

net "5 cents 
Picturesque Geographical R-aders By 

Charles F. King 4 volumes Fully illus- 

trated Volume 1 50 cents net 
FIRST STEPS WITH BRITISH ANu 

AMERICAN AUTHORS By Albert F. 

Blaisdell A.M. Net 75 cents 



Copies for examination sent prepaid upon receipt of above Introductory net prices 

LEE ANP SHEPARD Publishers Boston 



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